Dark Plums (21 page)

Surely if she confronted him as she was now, stripped of her deceptions, he would at last comprehend who she was and would understand how much she loved him. Her love would save them both.

“Alfredo, my darling, can you feel how much I love you?” she said silently, wondering if the waves of her emotion could reach him at this instant.

She had absorbed the poisons of all those who used her body. In fact, even now when she simply walked along the street, she was absorbing the poisons of frustrated and warped lives.

She must get away from all these people. Get a job as a cook in a sleepy bar again, or as a clerk in the back room of some office where there was the least possible human contact. Alfredo could work part-time again as a bartender.

He would understand that Michelle had to leave because the presence of a third person was destroying their life together.

She could feel pure golden warmth around her now as she walked down the cold, dark, deserted street, and she felt that at this instant she was understanding things with crystal clarity.

Alfredo was a god.

She was a goddess.

There were footsteps behind her. Muffled voices. Trying not to reveal any fear, she walked faster.

“Hey, Mama, wait for me.”

“Gimme some of that nice soft pussy.”

“Hey, Mama; hey, Mama!”

She broke into a run as she left the sidewalk and lurched into the middle of the street where it would be safer.

God help her.

“Hey, Mama!”

“Taxi!” she screamed. “Taxi!”

There it was, yellow light blinking, just around the corner. Look at me. Stop! Stop, she prayed.

The taxi screeched to a halt.

“She says she had an exorcism.”

“She's crazy.”

They were whispering about her. Through the walls she could hear their voices as she lay on the old green couch.

When she had told Alfredo about the gypsies, he leaned back in his chair in the kitchen and roared with laughter. He pulled her down on his lap and held her while he rubbed his fingers up and down her spine. His breath smelled of liquor, and as usual he was intoxicated.

“You don't understand. Yet you keep talking about Gurdjieff and awareness. Something very powerful happened.”

“
Loca
! You believe anything people tell you. You're suggestible!”

Falteringly, she tried to explain what had happened.

He grew angry, “You owe me three-nights' work,” he said, pushing her off his lap. “When are you going to make this up to me?” After he had drunk a good deal, his mood changes were violent. Involuntarily, she took a step backward but resolutely continued with what she had planned to say.

“I'll be working. But look, I want Michelle to leave. We need to change our lives.”

“Not now. First we need to get out of debt.”

“We're in debt?”

“I borrowed some bread on what I thought was a sure winner.”

“We're in debt?” She burst into tears. “There's no end to it!”

“You didn't tell those gypsies anything about me, did you?” He looked straight into her pupils, his own eyes narrow black slits.

“No.”

He took a swig from the bottle of rum on the table. His hands were shaking. Why had he changed so much? It was her fault. She could not nurture but only poison the lives she touched. The exorcism was probably fake, and he was right to laugh at her. She was still filled with something evil.

“I thought you loved me,” she said. “I thought I was working for
us
. If I'm not, then I should leave.”

The words came out before she could stop them. They sounded so final that she immediately wanted to take them back, as if they were fish she could scoop up into a net. But it was too late. What if he were to throw her out? Arctic wasteland. Cold. No love. No life. Help me, God, she prayed.

Later, she bathed with a capful of bath oil called “
Baño del Amor y Delirio
” that she had bought over a week ago at a tiny Puerto Rican shop where magic candles, scents, and powders to produce spells were sold. The label on the dark bottle had grown greasy from being in her purse all this time, and tonight she thought the smell was too sweet. It was a cheap scent with a hint of musk.

She heard the door slam, then Michelle's footsteps. Alfredo was shouting, “Hey, baby, how'd you make out?” He said something else that she couldn't hear clearly, and they both burst out laughing.

The warm water lapped over her. She vowed to sleep on the couch until Michelle moved out.

Later she heard them tossing about in the bedroom. Michelle was moaning with pleasure, and Alfredo cried out as he climaxed. Adrianne felt as if she were being blown apart like a tree by wind. Its leaves were her flesh; its branches her bones. Its roots were her heart being torn out of the earth.

I will sleep, she told herself. But she couldn't. Ail night she lay awake. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of Alfredo's rum. One drink. Another. Half the bottle.

On the all-night jazz station, Billie Holiday sang blues. The husky voice ate into her. She switched the station, then turned the radio off.

Sleep. Sleep, she told herself.

Still, she couldn't sleep, and at five a.m., weeping, she put on her comforting fox fur and went downstairs into the street where she walked and walked until finally she collapsed on a deserted piling by the East River. Pale sun rose in the sky. The streets began to stir again with traffic. When she returned to the loft, her throat was sore.

Despite fever and sore throat, she worked the next three nights, but on the fourth night she fainted just as she was about to walk out the door.

Alfredo was unexpectedly tender and insisted that she stay home to recover. The next few days she slept most of the time on the couch with the help of Courvoisier and codeine cough medicine.

One afternoon she watched Alfredo furiously sketch with ochre crayon on butcher paper. He was sketching a woman embracing a machine. She was pleased because this was the first time he'd sketched in weeks.

“What's that supposed to be?” she asked.

“Shit, Adrianne, don't bug me with stupid questions. And don't cringe like that. I hate it when you cringe like a beaten dog. Goddamn, stop crying!”

She huddled beneath the blankets and relaxed only when she could tell from the silence that he was working again.

Later, he sat down next to her on the couch. “These are my dreams I'm sketching, baby, my nightmares,” he said, his long, slender fingers soothing her damp forehead. “You're burning up with fever. Now go back to sleep.”

“I'm glad you're working again,” she whispered.

He kissed her with more affection than he had shown in months. For a moment she felt the old bond between them, with all the invisible threads that had once bound them together.

But then Michelle leaned over her, too, and said, “Can I get you anything?” Her long hair swept over Adrianne's face. How perfect Michelle's breasts were underneath the gauzy white nightgown. An image passed through her mind of giant shears snipping off those breasts.

“Can I get you anything to eat, Adrianne?”

“No, thanks.”

A few minutes later she heard Michelle and Alfredo in the kitchen. “Gimme those cigarettes … gimme, you bitch!” She heard them laugh and scuffle.

Ground glass or roach poison or household bleach in their coffee could kill them. She could stab them in their sleep. God help her from having these thoughts.

Finally, the front door slammed as Michelle left for acting classes or auditions or a little hustling. How much
did
Michelle bring in, she wondered, before she drowsed off.

She awakened to feel Alfredo gently shaking her. A vague, disturbing dream fragment rose up then dissipated as he lightly kissed her her lips. “I brought you a cup of tea, sweetheart.”

She turned over his wrist to look at his watch. It was one-fifteen in the afternoon. He wasn't high on anything yet; he was himself; he was the Alfredo she had first fallen in love with.

Just then the phone rang. She heard him talk to someone on the other end. His voice became tense. When he hung up he said, “I've got to go meet someone.”

Agitated, he dressed to go out and put on his cashmere overcoat. Before he left, he fortified himself with more rum. Then he sniffed up a few specks of white powder on the back of his hand through one nostril at a time.

On the fifth day Adrianne was better, although she still felt shaky when she walked around the loft. Both Alfredo and Michelle were out. She noted with distaste how crammed the loft was with Michelle's belongings. Michelle's white panties and Alfredo's pale blue jockey shorts were entwined with the bed sheets. It all seemed unbearable! With regret, she thought of Max who had once been so kind to her.

For the past few days Max had been appearing in her dreams, and now she made up her mind to visit him. Did he still live in the rooming house? What day was it anyway? Sunday? Would he be in? With great hesitation she picked up the phone to dial the number. Suppose he had died?

Her stomach churned.

When the phone rang at the other end she had an urge to hang up, but she held on. “May I speak with Max?”

“Who's calling?” asked the landlady.

“Adrianne.”

“Oh, hello. How are you?” the woman asked in her matter of fact voice.

“Fine. Is Max in?” Adrianne held her breath.

“I'll see.”

At last she heard his familiar voice with its thick accent. “Adrianne,” he said. “This is a surprise.”

“I've been thinking about you, Max. Could I visit you?”

“Of course. When would you like?”

“Would today about five be all right?”

“Of course,” he said. “Ah, but this is a surprise,” he repeated. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine.”

All afternoon as she lay on the couch under blankets, she wondered and worried about what she was going to say to him.

After she showered and put on her makeup, she decided on a wool dress of virginal ivory with gold earrings and bracelet. Carefully, she combed and brushed her hair and applied dabs of Chanel Number Five. Little was left in her large bottle. Michelle must have been using it. She debated what coat to wear. The fox seemed too rich. The black rabbit fur was worn through in spots. When she leaned out the kitchen window, the air felt warm, and so she decided on her new beige trench coat.

Excited and nervous, she hailed a taxi. The sun was low in the sky. Spring buds were breaking out on the small street trees.

When at last she rang the doorbell outside her old rooming house, Max opened the door and stood there, thinner and more haggard than she remembered. He was not in his usual scruffy bedroom slippers but was dressed to go out in a brown suit. His shoes were well-shined, and he wore a blue and gold print tie.

“Max.”

“Adrianne.
Meine liebchen
.”

As they embraced, she caught a whiff of his old man's smell. They stepped back from each other, and he said admiringly, “Adrianne, you look so beautiful. What do you want with me?”

“I … I don't know.”

“You are in trouble? You need money? You look so, well … so beautiful … such beautiful clothes … but inside … the girl inside … you are all right,
meine liebchen
?”

“No,” she blurted out.

“We go out for coffee, yes? Or better still, a bite to eat. Is it warm outside, or do I need an overcoat?”

“It's getting chilly.”

He put on a worn grey overcoat and a hat. Then tucking her arm under his, he walked with her down the street. “You will do me the honor of allowing me to buy you dinner, yes?” His voice was warm and caring.

“I'm not very hungry.”

“A little something … a bowl of soup or a lamb chop, yes?”

“That would be nice.”

They went into the same Horn and Hardart's where they'd been last summer, nearly a year ago, and they both had vegetable soup with crackers. While they were eating, she suddenly felt nauseous and excused herself. She threw up in the rest room.

Max, Max. What am I going to do with you? she wondered. She threaded her way back through the crowded cafeteria and spied him at their table, self-possessed, dignified, and so lonely.

“What brings you to me? You are in trouble? That man … you are with him still?”

“Yes, but I'm not happy. I want to leave him.”

“Tell me, what have you been doing? What kind of work?”

“Oh, just a job.”

“A cooking job?”

“No … a long story. I don't want to talk about it right now.” Her throat constricted.

“All right,
meine liebchen
.” Timidly, he patted her hand. “Why do you come to me?”

“I … I want to get to know you better.”

“Is much you are not telling me,” he said. “But is all right. You tell me what you want. I am so glad to see you. I have missed you. You were like a bird with a broken wing. Did I ever tell you that? I hope that now the wing it is fixed,” he said tenderly. “I will not ask you more questions if you do not want to talk. Ah, but you are so beautiful. You are a sweet girl … sweet like the springtime … like my daughter Miriam. If she had lived, maybe she would look like you. Excuse me.” He blew his nose. “I must forget the past. The doctor tell me not to think always of the past. Is not good for me.”