There’s a big window in the back of the house. It’s double height. It rises up through a void in the ceiling above. The mullions are aluminum, glazed with large panes of tempered glass. The curtain-wall spans the width of the building with one centered glass door. It’s a structure unto itself. Like everything else in the house, it’s unadorned. It looks out on the backyard, which isn’t much, gravel, an unused sandbox, two soccer goals, and the neighbors’ tall cedar fences on all three sides. There’s no ocean, river, woods, or great lawn to look upon — functionless modernism. It may well have been a mirror — two stories tall, twenty-five feet wide — the giant mirror of Brooklyn. People could come from far and wee to look at themselves in it. I could run the whole thing for you, Marco. I’ll only take 20 percent. It’ll pay off whatever it cost you to put it in within the first year. I realize I don’t know how much it cost, how much the whole house cost to buy and renovate and furnish. I don’t have any way to price the glass, the metal, the labor, the markup. Marco had asked me my opinion on the quality of the work overall, the natural maple doorjambs and stairs and cabinetry — not with any bravado — he just wanted to know if he’d been treated fairly. I never told him anything. Perhaps he’s still waiting, though it did seem strange, the master negotiator, asking me for reassurance. What could I say to him now? I’ve stolen his change and watched his building fall.
I take the money and go out. I have a twenty in my pocket, too, but I don’t want to break it — not on coffee. Breaking it begins its slow decline to nothing.
I’ve forgotten that people go out, even on weeknights. Smith Street, which used to be made up of bodegas and check-cashing stores, looks more like SoHo. It’s lined with bars and bar hoppers, restaurants and diners. Many of them are the same age I was when I got sober. There was a time when people spoke Farsi and Spanish on the streets and in the shops, but now there’s white people mostly, all speaking English, tipsy and emboldened with magazine-like style. They peer into the windows of the closed knickknack emporiums that have replaced the religious artifact stores and social clubs.
It’s hot but not muggy. I walk north with the traffic, trying to stay curbside so as to avoid getting trapped by meandering groups and hand-holding couples. I hop the curb and walk in the gutter to get around the outpouring from a shop. There’s a party going on or breaking up. Inside there are paintings hanging on the wasabi green walls. There are small halogen track lights on the ceiling. Their beams wash out the paintings. Nobody’s looking at the work.
“Hey!”
I can tell whoever is calling is calling for me. It’s a woman’s voice — full of wine and cigarettes. A bus approaches. I have to step up on the sidewalk toward the voice. She’s standing in front of me.
“Hey,” she says again in a cutesy, little girl way. Her hair’s in pigtails. Her face is as hot as the lights. “I know you.”
Her name is Judy or Janet or something close to that. Her daughter was once in a tumbling class with X.
“Hello,” I answer. I’m a foot taller than she is. I can’t help but look down at her. She looks up at me, still smiling.
“Jeez, I never realized you were so tall. Now I know where that boy of yours gets it.”
“Actually,” I say, looking over her into the crowd of partygoers — I don’t recognize anyone—“I was a small kid. I grew after high school.” She’s still smiling, but her face has lost some of the heat it held. She doesn’t seem to care about the info.
“Whose show?”
She looks surprised. She touches her chest lightly with both hands. The bus rolls behind me, hot with diesel funk. My first job in New York was as a bike messenger. I once watched a guy skid on an oil slick and go down on Madison Avenue in front of the M1. It ran over his head — popped it open. Everyone watching threw up. She leans against the bus stop sign, flattening a breast against it.
“It’s mine,” she says.
I look over her into the glare of the makeshift gallery. It looks as if a flashbulb got stuck in midshot. I think it will hurt my head if I go into all that light.
“Come on. I’ll give you a personal tour.” She turns, expecting me to follow, which I do. She doesn’t seem at all concerned with the light. Perhaps I have nothing to worry about, or perhaps she’s become inured over time. The crowd parts for her, some smile and check me out. Now I recognize some of them, from the gym, from the coffee shop. They range in age from twenty-five to forty. Most of them appear to be single or dating. I can tell they’re all childless; they’re too wrapped up in what it is they believe Jane or Judy and I appear to be doing. I’m sure some of them will query her as to what is going on as soon as I leave.
Claire was still a dancer when we started dating. She’d had a show at the Joyce and a party afterward at her apartment. When I arrived, she was busy introducing Edith to her friends. The loft was full of admirers — new and old. There were prep school and college mates, other dancers, East Village divas both male and female. I watched Claire take Edith around. Her mother, as always, was unruffled by the chaos of new faces and personalities — gay boys and bi-girls and art freaks and the loud pumping disco on the stereo. Cigarettes and magnums of cheap Chilean wine. Edith was in full support of her daughter. Then she saw me. Perhaps Claire had described me to her mother and Edith was trying to determine if I was me. She looked at me too long. Claire noticed her mother’s attention had shifted and looked to where she was looking. She smiled and made sure that Edith saw it. The dancers she’d been talking to looked as well. There was a nudge, a whisper, then Claire led Edith by the waist over to me. I met them in the middle of the room. Claire took each of us by the forearm and placed her mother’s hand in mine. She made it clear to everyone there that she was mine and that our budding romance was mine to fuck up.
Judy or Jane offers me a glass of wine, then a bottle of beer, and seems somewhat taken aback when I refuse, as though the drinks are inextricably linked to the paintings, and by extension to her. They’re all headless nudes of women except one, which has her face and an enormous erect white penis. She’s slumping, sexily, I suppose, in a Louis XIV chaise.
“What do you think?”
“Do you like Freud?”
“Freud.” She laughs sharply, perhaps to hide her offense. She looks up at me, raises an eyebrow, and shakes her head. “Freud?”
“Lucien.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. I like them.” She looks deeply into the representation of her face. The nose is crooked and one eye socket is smaller than the other, which on her real face is true, but not to the extent that she’s depicted it. In the painting, she’s made a slight asymmetry much more pronounced, as though her defect is an expression, as though winking would make the bone rather than the flesh atop it contort. She’s made a mess of her skin tone, which is medium to dark brown. But she’s shaded her painting with peach and pink and gray — layer upon layer of paint, like theory upon theory to solve a problem. What is the problem? She’s a sloppy theorist who can’t paint? The penis is perfect.
“I’m ignorant,” I say. “I’m not very good at articulating my responses to art.”
“Bullshit. You don’t like them. It’s cool.” She smiles a fake smile and squints her eyes. I wait for her skull to morph. It doesn’t.
“Show’s over. Let’s get wasted.”
We walk south, deeper into the neighborhood. She sets the pace, walking easily through the crowds. People smile at her. She smiles back. They smile at us, as if there is an us. Sometimes people smile when I’m with Claire. I wonder if liberal white people smile at each other, pass out happy approval of each other’s mates—I approve. You may pass.