Dark Plums (11 page)

“Then I started Cooper Union—never got a dime from my family. I was working my way through, and I saved up money for passage on a freighter to Havana because I wanted to see my father once more. He died just a week before I got there! Later, I learned that he'd tried to get me back after the summer I spent with him. He'd written Mama that he wanted me to come back and live with him, but she never showed me that letter.”

“Oh, Alfredo.”

“I learned about this from his relatives. They told me that he'd written me several letters, too. But I never got them. Mama destroyed them. All the time I'd been thinking that he didn't want me around, and maybe he didn't even like me.”

“I want to help you!” Adrianne cried out in a burst of emotion. “I want to make it all up to you.”

“
Que Dios te bendiga, preciosa
,” He kissed her and held her in his arms. “I'm wearing down. I haven't had enough sleep in months.”

She put her hand on his warm chest.

“Am I taking up too much time?”

“No, baby, no, but you do demand time.”

She was silent for a moment.

“I'll do it for you,” she said at last. “Because I love you.”

“Do you know what you're getting into? It takes guts.”

“I'll do it for you,” she repeated. “Because I love you more than anyone in the world.”

“You're beautiful.”

“I'm scared. I don't want to go to jail.”

“I'll protect you, baby. Whether something is legal has no connection with whether or not it's right. Madmen make up the rules. But God is watching over us. He knows what's in your heart.”

They lay against each other in silence. She had never felt so much harmony between them. Their energies flowed into each other; they were indeed one larger being. Shadows cast by the candle flickered.

“Our bodies don't last,” he said. “We're born, and then we die. What happens when you fuck a stranger? Nothing really.”

“I think so,” she said, still in the realm of vastness into which the marijuana had propelled her.

“There's no emotional bond. They just get to feel your body, that's all. They never touch the real you.”

She gripped his hand. Gradually the realm of light had vanished. Now she was in a desert, and the only human being who could touch her lonely core was Alfredo.

“It scares me though,” she said. “It's so dangerous.”

“Not if you use common sense,” he said. “You're intuitive. When you're scared, you even get psychic, right?”

“How do you know?”

“I
know
you in my bones. Baby, you and I belong together. You won't be hustling long. We'll save up money so we can split. Then soon, with any luck, my paintings will start to sell. We'll leave New York. It's a different world on the Caribbean Islands or in South America. We'll travel. We'll get married.”

Her heart thudded with excitement.

“I know about South America,” she said. “I told you, my parents are from Chile.”

“We'll go there,
chica
. We'll go to Cuba, where Castro is creating a whole new society.”

He was kneeling over her now, and very gently and sensitively and slowly he made love to her until finally she let herself go in a flooding orgasm.

“This is spiritual,” she whispered.

“You can shut it down and make it just physical,” he said. “That's what Gurdjieff would do.”

He got up and worked in the studio while she slept.

Not until the first morning light shone in through the air shaft did he finally lie down again. His body curved around her. As he breathed against her shoulder, she stirred and turned to him.

“Alfredo, will you still love me?”

“Of course, baby. I'll love you all the more,” he mumbled into her hair. “Now let me get some sleep.”

Adrianne clung to Alfredo's arm as they made their way uptown along Broadway. It was muggy and overcast. They had both slept little the previous night. As she walked, her spike heels wobbled. She realized that she'd forgotten to take her diet pills. Since waking up, she had consumed only tea and half a piece of toast. With almost no food inside her, she felt dizzy, nervous, and tired from the marijuana she'd smoked last night as well as conspicuous in the tight blue jersey dress and flashy brass earrings that she'd bought this morning at Klein's on the Square.

It was four in the afternoon when they went into a bar that was dark and smoky, thick with odors of beer and roasting meat. Alfredo ordered two draft beers.

“Want something to eat, baby?”

“No, thanks.” She wanted to show him she was strong-willed about sticking to her diet, even though the smell of food made her ache with hunger.

There was stubble on Alfredo's face. Marked with fatigue, he looked older.

“Are you sure you can go through with this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He nuzzled her fingers and lit another cigarette, although in the last hour he'd already smoked five or six.

After he had eaten, they continued walking uptown until he stopped and said, “Here's your turf, baby. I'll hang around for a while.” He motioned to the bar behind them.

Why had he chosen this neighborhood, this particular block? A cluster of tough-looking men at the corner filled her with fear.

The next block felt safer, although she didn't know exactly why. Perhaps it was the Spanish grocery store on the corner. She went into a hotel a few doors down from the grocery. There she rented a room from a young, pimply-faced hotel clerk who sat behind the desk of a small lobby which had a stuffy, sweetish smell. The room was nineteen dollars a week. Luckily she had enough money with her to pay for it.
Alfredo had gone over all this with her earlier before he cashed his severance check at the corner grocery.

“I may have a few visitors,” she said, giving the clerk a big smile. “Is that all right?”

“That's your business,” he said, apparently bored with the transaction, and he returned to reading his
Police Gazette
.

Going outside again, she stood a few doors away against the window of a lingerie store, and as she swung her handbag slightly, shifting her weight occasionally from foot to foot, waves of people flowed past. She had a headache from the beer, and her stomach ached with hunger, although at the same time she felt curiously weightless and adrift in space. Standing at the other corner were two young women wearing tight dresses and spike heels like her. One was tall and blond; the other was plump with long, wavy black hair. Their hostile stares frightened her. She hoped they wouldn't hassle her about invading their territory. All the people looked somehow deformed, incomplete, ugly, their skins sallow beneath the polluted gray sky. The air was so heavy that it felt as if a storm were about to break.

A man in a brown suit with horn-rimmed glasses approached. He looked her up and down, as if mentally undressing her. “Wanna have some fun, sweetheart?” he asked. Maybe he was a buyer in the garment district. He didn't give off vibes of being a cop or a weirdo, so she decided to chance it.

“You got twenty dollars?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Come with me,” she said.

She hoped to God he wasn't a cop. She would treat him as if he were part of a dream, and indeed she felt as if she were now living inside a dream. All this wasn't real. Only Alfredo and she together were real.

The hotel clerk glanced at them as they walked through the lobby. She'd better slip him a bill later on, as Alfredo had told her to.

They walked up three flights of stairs into her newly rented room, narrow like a box car with its fresh, unrumpled bed. Sink in a corner. The room smelled of Lysol. Beige drapes and worn, greenish carpet. Chenille bedspread, creaky springs, mattress sagging with the weights of all the bodies that had lain on it. Old mahogany dresser.

“You can put the money on the dresser,” she said airily, as if she were acting in a play. Alfredo had told her how to handle the money part—to ask for it first. He had told her what to say and do. God, she was dumb—that he had to tell her!

The stranger undressed casually as if he were used to going with prostitutes. At least he seemed safe. And he actually put some bills on the dresser. Didn't dispute the price or threaten her, nor did he object when, still in her underwear, she washed him off with a damp washcloth.

She took off the rest of her clothes.

“Mmmm, you're nice,” the man, said almost dreamily as he ran his hands along her thighs.

They got underneath the sheet. Fondling his cock, she slipped a thin rubber condom over it, as Alfredo had advised her.

“Do you have to do this, doll?”

“Yes.”

Then he was on top of her, weighty, hairy, solid-smelling. It was quick and uncomplicated. She was surprised to feel within herself a slight stirring of desire, even an orgasm.

Five minutes and it was over.

Finished.

He left.

She sat on the bed and stared at the flowered wallpaper for a long time, still naked, shivering a little. Since she had lost weight, she felt chilly a great deal of the time. Finally, she went over and picked up the bills on the dresser—a ten and two fives. Carefully she placed them inside her wallet. Then she returned to the murkily lit Flamingo Bar where Alfredo said he'd be, and she found him at a corner table.

“How'd it go?” he asked.

“Okay.” She reached inside her purse and handed him the money.

“Great, baby. You're doing great,” he said as he slid his hand along her nylon-sheathed leg. “Are you going to be all right on your own for a while?”

She nodded. She felt as if he were leaving her alone on the North Pole surrounded by a vast expanse of ice that merged with the sky, and her blood was freezing in her veins.

“See you later. I've
got
to get some work done for the show. Be careful, sweetheart, and take a taxi home.”

He could he be so casual about all this?

How could he concentrate on painting while she was out here alone on this chilly street corner in front of a discount luggage store? She had moved south a block, as it felt safer.

It grew colder, and she shivered in her jersey dress. Finally, she decided to return to the Flamingo and have a drink. There she gave herself the luxury of ordering spaghetti and meatballs to still her hunger pangs. Then feeling bolder, she accepted a proposition from a hulking man in a dark blue suit and loud tie who was sitting next to her at the bar. The fat, red-faced Irish bartender looked at her curiously. Would she have to pay him off, too?

After the big man there were five more men. There was a Puerto Rican whom she met near the Spanish grocery. He was delicately built, almost like a girl, in contrast to the previous client whose heaviness had nearly crushed her. Then there were two businessmen and several men of varying ages with slicked back greasy hair and tight pants. She was beginning to lose count.

The hookers she had seen earlier disappeared for a while. Later on in the evening she would see one, then the other.

A youth with a pasty face and twisted body in a wheelchair lingered for a long time on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and watched her. When he did not return her smile, she began to feel uneasy, and when she heard a police siren, she cringed.

A policeman strode down the street with his nightstick dangling at his side. Quickly, she walked to the grocery store, bought a package of cigarettes, and walked around the corner. Was he following her? After another block, she turned her head to look. No one was in sight. She walked on, waited, picked up another man who was plump and grey-haired. She took him back to the hotel. A few heaving thrusts, and it was done.

It seemed amazing that all the men paid the twenty dollars she requested, except for the Puerto Rican who told her he had only fifteen. She was exhilarated with her prowess. At least some part of her was valued. How many girls could make so much money in just a few hours? How many would have the guts to escape from a life of
drudgery in this way? Alfredo was right. The world belonged to the daring.

After the last man had left, she sat alone in a kind of stupor. Then she washed herself all over, dried herself with the small hand towel, and, naked as she was, started to cry uncontrollably.

How absurd it was to have refused poor old Max her body.

She wished Alfredo were here with her. She wanted to go home to him, but she ought to bring home more money than she had taken in so far.

Feeling too tired to move, she curled up and fell asleep.

She didn't know how long she had been sleeping when a knock on the door awakened her.

Nervously, she wrapped the chenille bedspread around her and in the darkness went to the door.

“Who is it?”

“Toby. The desk clerk.”

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

“I'm tired.”

“It's important.”

She opened the door a crack. In the light of the hallway, his face had a yellow cast. His black hair was slicked down with pomade.

“What is it?”

“Let me in a minute.” Stepping inside, he switched on the light next to the door, then glanced at the unmade bed and at her.

“You've had a lot of visitors today.”

He was looking her over strangely. She realized one of her nipples was visible because the bedspread had slipped. Hurriedly, she pulled it up around her.

“You told me that was okay.”

“One of our permanent guests might complain.”

What kind of permanent guests does a hotel like this have, she wondered?

He stepped towards her, and when he touched her upper arm she wanted to shriek. Backing away, she grabbed her purse, which was lying on a chair. Quickly, she took out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to him. Now he'll go away, she thought. But he just stood there. When
he touched her arm again, she had goose pimples.