Friends and Traitors Read online

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Put that dreadful thing away,” I said. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “You look so pretty, here,” he said, “in the glow of the movie house.”

  “Sir,” I yelled at top volume. “Remove yourself! Gather up your decency and march to the bathrooms where I am certain that you will find any number of degenerates looking to service you in the manner you see fit!”

  God help the sorry sot but he listened, and as he fumbled with his fly, the man was blindsided by a blond freight train. Baby Baby Baby. A full fury of fists. The pathetic old gent down amongst the semen and soda stains.

  “Baby! Stop! Enough!”

  Baby beating the man, the house lights coming up, a whole menagerie of old men peeking their heads up from the rows and running out of the bathrooms, another man pulling Baby away from my assailant, Baby being told that he was fired and needn’t return, Baby and I walking home, Baby not speaking to me whilst I offered profuse apologies, Baby refusing to parley for several days, refusing to sleep in the bed beside mine.

  Yet as the Ancient Greeks understood in the days of their hotstepping hoodoo, silence as a long-term habit never wins many acolytes.

  We reemerged, gradually, into true dialogue, though at first I didn’t dare stray towards the topic of Variety Photoplays. When Baby laughed and I laughed with him, I inquired plainly as to what the hell he’d been doing at that dreadful cinema.

  “I needed money,” he said. “So I went looking for jobs.”

  “At a suck fuck movie palace?”

  “That was the appealing part,” said Baby. “The open fucking, Adeline, it’s so foreign, but there’s actually something really beautiful about two men coming together for anonymous sex.”

  “Baby, tell me, please,” I said, “that you did not have sexual intercourse with those men.”

  As soon as the words leapt from my tongue, I regretted it.

  “And if I did?” he asked.

  “I’d burn with worry,” I said. “Hedonism of that kind died out with disco.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve spent my whole life being told that having sex is death. I’ve learned the lesson.”

  Baby engaging in sex with a fellow patron of the Variety was as likely as Mother wrestling the sun down from the high heavens.

  I took no pleasure in his abstinence, a sadder outcome than if he’d received blowjobs in the bathroom. Imagine our Baby, randy as a dunghill rooster, hiding in the dark corners of Variety Photoplays, too afraid, too shy, too bashful, too interested in, I suppose, monogamy. Too ashamed to be blown by an old closet case from the Lower East Side.

  I let the topic die, resolving to take control of Baby’s quixotic sexual misadventures. I remembered the purple blossoms on Baby’s swollen hands after the night that we became first acquainted.

  APRIL 1987

  Adeline Convinces Baby and Kevin to Have Sex

  One night I was at Kevin’s apartment, discoursing with that feller about no matter in particular, meaning, obviously, the long borrrrrring drag of literature. Kevin conversed as best he could, on a human level, by talking my ear off about the books he loved, ones that I would never read.

  “It’s really kinky,” said Kevin. “Tom Ripley’s got a love affair with this much younger boy, Frank. At one point, Ripley dresses in drag and visits a gay bar.”

  “Who in all of creation is Tom Ripley?” I asked.

  “Adeliiiiiiiine,” said Kevin, sounding disturbingly close to Mother. “You know exactly who Tom Ripley is, remember?”

  He went on and on and on and on about Tom Ripley this and Tom Ripley that and Tom Ripley there, reciting some rotting nonsense about someone named Dickie Greenleaf. I paced about his apartment, pretending to listen, examining piles of books pushed up against the baseboards, stacked atop every available surface.

  I came across Queer by William S. Burroughs.

  “Whatever is this?” I asked, holding it up for Kevin.

  “Oh, he only got that published a year or two ago.”

  “Darling, why are you reading this?”

  “I don’t like Burroughs,” said Kevin, “but no one can shut up about him. So I read a few of his books. Junky is okay. Queer’s the one I like most.”

  “Yet you aren’t much more than a pussy hound,” I said. “Why should you care about queers?”

  “That’s an offensive thought,” said Kevin. “Aren’t we all a little bisexual?”

  “Don’t count me amongst those ranks,” said I.

  “I’m sure you’ve been attracted to women,” said Kevin. “Most girls have a secret desire for other girls. Everyone is attracted to everyone. I’ve been attracted to men.”

  “Have you?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Who hasn’t?”

  In that instant, I birthed my wicked plan, knowing that it could be achieved, long suspecting that Baby’s hostility toward Kevin was rooted in more than a simple clash of personalities. The only questions were those hallowed rules of good journalism: who, what, where, when, how, and why?

  And then word circulated about school that a delightful girl named Luanna Potrero was hosting a party the next weekend, a themed monstrosity. The Dress Like You Go to a Normal College party. I informed both Kevin and Baby, saying that I burned to attend, like I’d caught a terribly painful dose of the clap, and mentioning that I had no desire to bring their counterpart, but what could be done, the news had leaked, and now it was a destiny shared amongst us three.

  Themed parties are terrible bores. I refuse to participate in their ridiculous narrative justifications. For Luanna’s party, I wore my own clothing, an outrageous pink vinyl dress I’d picked up, and teased out my hair, yellow and blue shadow above my eyes, ultra-thick mascara. I looked amaaaaaazing.

  Baby treated the party with utter gravity, electing to play the square. He donned the same drab clothing he’d worn when first we met, almost a year earlier, the white letters of his ugly red sweater reading INDIANA.

  “Why didn’t you incinerate those rags?” I asked.

  “I’m sentimental,” said Baby.

  Kevin met us outside of our old Bank of the Metropolis. He too had entered into the spirit of the occasion, dressing supremely preppy. “My brother goes to Yale,” he said. “This is pretty close to what he wears every day.”

  Luanna Potrero’s apartment wasn’t far from our abode, being a one-bedroom at 9th off University Place. Outside the redbrick building, I espied a gaggle of gals from Parsons. We joined them in the elevator, riding up, up, up in strained silence.

  On the fifth floor, inside the party. A nightmare New York television view of America. All the country’s grotesque fashions and meaningless cultural artifacts caricatured by a group of big-city art students.

  Kevin ventured into the bathroom, where Luanna’d packed ice and beer into her bathtub. He played healing Jesus and fished out bottles. I guzzled mine like an Arab at an oasis.

  The party’s subtext highlighted our presumed superiority to Americans beyond the boundaries of Manhattan. It was literally ironic as the cruel streak meant to distinguish us from the herd only demonstrated our unbreakable bonds with the triumphant beast.

  I was sure that out in them contiguous forty-eight, a goon was throwing a Dress Like You’re in New York Party, and a blonde from Cheese Country had opted to go highwire and doll herself up, and the costume she’d devised was identical to what I was wearing.

  Luanna shimmied and twisted on the makeshift dance floor, and I envied her, wondering how she could be so unselfconscious. The song was about a year old, “Kiss” by Prince, detailing how Prince did not want a girl with any specific human qualities beyond the ability to suck on his face.

  Myself, I weren’t much for dancing. When Luanna broke from her undulations, I engaged her in a conversation.

  “Beer is fine for the proles, darling,” I said, “but where do you keep the hard stuff?”

  “What, you mean like cocaine?” she a
sked.

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “Where is your liquor, have you any tequila?”

  “I’ve got some José Cuervo hidden in my bedroom, like under my bed,” she said. “But don’t drink it all, I want some later.”

  There I was, down on my knees, hands under Luanna’s bed. A scene beyond imagination when I boarded the plane at LAX.

  I filled Kevin and Baby with shots, attempting to bring them to that holy place of tequila enlightenment where buffoons are damnably drunk and superbly sober, where the drinker becomes, momentarily, an incarnation of Cary Grant. I wanted those lads stinko.

  I kept the bottle in a Donna Karan bag that I’d bought months earlier, giving the boys each one shot every thirty minutes. Soon they were mad for life, deranged with liquor. Baby started dancing, and do you know, even in his perilous state, the boy had rhythm. Kevin, poisoned by the dreaded blue agave, pushed me into a dark corner and groped like a sophomore at a drive-in.

  When they tottered on the verge of uselessness, I rounded them up, saying good-bye to Luanna Potrero, and pushing my menfolk out the door. Baby sang a deliriously off-key rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”

  The elevator door opened. We stumbled into the street.

  “I’m going home,” said Kevin. “I’m too fucked up. I can’t deal with Union Square.”

  “Young man,” said I, “you are coming with us. I will brook no dissent!”

  Back in our suite at 31 Union Square West, our old Bank of the Metropolis, Baby sat at the table, Kevin and I on the couch. Baby and Kevin talked about, of all possible things, basketball. I stopped listening to their nonsense, which I gather was about the Bulls and the Knicks, and tried to discern a way by which their bonhomie might be manipulated, but I couldn’t see the angle. I decided on a simpler technique.

  “Baby,” I said, “don’t stay up on account of us. Kevin isn’t staying over, so you might as well go to bed. I’ll come in soon enough.”

  Baby walked towards the bathroom, forgetting to shut the door. We heard the soft sound of his splashing urine. He said goodnight and went into our bedroom.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything while he was around,” said Kevin, head lolling on the back of the couch. “Why did you make me come here if you aren’t letting me stay?”

  “Don’t trip yourself up on a pretext, old sport,” I said.

  I told him the plan.

  I argued against his protestations, suggesting that he was a prude and calling him bourgeois in his morals, saying that he was nothing like his great literary heroes, asking him if he thought that he could understand literature if he wouldn’t act like a person made of literature. Still he objected. I posed the question: “Don’t you care at all?”

  “How can you even ask?”

  “If you care, you’ll do it,” I said.

  “But how?” he asked.

  “I suggest that you get up, open that door, climb that ladder, and crawl into bed with him. Once there, I imagine you’ll figure out the rest. The basic principles are the same. Go and give him the time. You’re horny, aren’t you, so why not?”

  “Won’t you be jealous?” asked Kevin.

  “I haven’t the slightest what you mean,” I said. We went back and forth. “Either you do it or you can leave. Soon he’ll pass out. Your window for homoerotic pleasure is fast closing.”

  “Fine,” said Kevin, getting up.

  For the first time, I suffered exile on the couch.

  I woke with Baby standing over me, grim, his face looking down from the most awful perspective, giving him a droopy double chin. Reader, your friend Adeline doesn’t very much care to see anyone from that view, let alone a person upon whom she’s foisted a great deal of liquor and the offices of her boyfriend.

  “How ever long have you been there?” I asked.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Please, in the future,” I said, “let’s try and avoid being creepy.”

  I sat up, gradually, my body aching. Which was rather unusual as I’d been a nun the night before, barely touched a drip of that rotten demon alcohol. Perhaps it was a psychic, telepathic, emotional resonance off of Baby. Or perhaps it was exhaustion from shepherding an idea to fruition. Or perhaps the simple discomfort from sleeping on the futon.

  “So?” I asked Baby.

  “So,” he said.

  “Kevin?” I asked.

  “Gone,” said Baby. “Before I woke up.”

  “Did the boy speak no words? Or leave a note of good-bye?”

  “He snuck out,” said Baby, “with the first light of day.”

  “Busy, busy, busy,” I said. “How was it?”

  “Personal,” said Baby. “I don’t think I can talk about it.”

  “It’s your funeral,” I said, going to the bathroom. Then I scoured the kitchen, seeing if my South Korean roommates had any coffee, which they had, a glass jar of Folgers Instant. I brought the kettle to a boil and poured two cups over the grainy powder. I intended one for Baby, but he’d fallen asleep on the couch.

  Halfway through the second cup, I noticed that my keys were on the table, offering a somewhat reduced appearance. I examined the ring. Two keys lighter. Kevin’s, removed. I assumed by him.

  I’m not of a morbid mind. I avoid reading symbolism into daily life, but the subtext seemed indisputable. I telephoned Kevin. There wasn’t any answer on his end of the line.

  That evening, when I assumed that he wouldn’t be keeping social appointments, I made my way to his apartment. I buzzed his apartment. No answer. I buzzed again. No answer. I buzzed a third time, loooooooooooooooooooong. No answer.

  My fingers mashed against the buzzer for every apartment but Kevin’s. A crackling voice across the speaker. I responded with a blurry nonword, a rough imitation of English. The door unlocked.

  I climbed the stairs to Kevin’s floor, and stood beside his door, knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking.

  “Kevin,” I said. “Answer this door at once! No man may hide forever!”

  There was no answer. I felt the great fool, like a 1950s hysteric who’s just discovered that the boy next door has knocked her up.

  I chalked Kevin’s behavior up to the mysteries of human experience. I was new with knowledge. The orchestration of sexual liaisons between one’s boyfriend and other men was not, perhaps, a step conducive towards building a stable relationship. What did I care, really? The city was awash with boys, and my bestest had eaten from the tree of knowledge.

  Back at home, Baby continued his refusal of any discussion. I poked at him with my finger, pushing into his ribs, giggling madly, until he said, “Fine, fine, I’ll tell you something, but only one thing, okay?”

  “Pray continue, dear boy,” I said.

  “What really surprised me,” said Baby, “was how warm it was. It burned in my hand.”

  I let out a shriek, appalled and amused. “Oh my God!” I said. “Baby, you send me, you really send me! You finally did it!”

  MAY 1987

  Adeline and Baby Move to East 7th Street

  Life continued apace, as it does, as it will, as it must. The very merry month of May arrived, with warmer days and looser clothes. My final projects came due, all focused on the 84 Second Avenue Incident.

  The imagined crime scene, the moment of absolute loneliness, of being helpless and not having a single person to stick up for you, of dying raped in New York in the annus horribilis of 1974, of Helen Sopolsky appearing but once in the Times, of her family leaving the storefront untouched, a memorial hovering over the East Village, rebuking the indifferent city, rebuking a place that let its women die miserable deaths, rebuking the great urban organism that allowed the killer to go free, case unsolved, never apprehended, a tableau openly mocking the idea of justice. I earned straight As.

  Having opted not to take summer courses, I received word from the bureaucrats that I must evacuate the dormitory at the end of the spring semester. Poor Baby! He’d only just settled into gainf
ul employment at an actual, respectable cinema in the West 20s, and now, as it does, as it will, as it must, life crept upon him, demanding that he abandon his home.

  I had no intention of leaving the city and suggested that we venture into the world and acquire an East Village apartment.

  “Adeline,” he said, “I won’t have much money to pay rent.”

  “Cease your prattling about lucre,” I said. “You’ll pay what you can and Mother will cover the rest.”

  Typical of all endeavors in real estate, our timing was poor. Gone were the days of 2,500 square feet for $300 a month. Not that money itself was any object, but I rather enjoyed being cutthroat with the gruesome landlords of NYC.

  Baby had no stomach for haggling, so I removed him from the matter, searching for apartments in the Village Voice classifieds until I uncovered a large space on 7th between Second and Cooper Square, diagonally across the street from McSorley’s. A two-bedroom third-floor walkup. The landlord, a Neapolitan named Stefano, informed me that the apartment was rent stabilized, but I hadn’t the slightest what that meant. $700 a month. There was no buzzer for the apartment, so guests would have to scream our names from the street.

  It was time to bid adieu to 31 Union Square West, to Sun-Yoon and Jae-Hwa, to the students that we’d encountered in the elevators, to the tenants who hated us merely for breathing, to our view of Union Square and the slow construction of the Zeckendorf Towers, to our old Bank of the Metropolis.

  School rules required a check-out with the RA, but I was raised in opulence and privilege and believed myself exempt. Sally and Jane could take care of such matters. I wanted to leave as soon as possible, well before the other students, desperate to avoid witnessing the humiliations of all those would-be artists packing stereos into their father’s station wagons.

  “I’m going to miss it,” said Baby.

  The new apartment was ridiculously decrepit, with an old pull-the-chain toilet stuck inside a closet and our bathtub located in the kitchen. I thought it was chaaarming, a very nice welcome to living away from any protective power. No parents, no dormitory, no rules, no nothing. Tell me, reader, what coarse beast wants their first apartment to have class?