What Alex Johnson gives his reader in this story seems to be a simple plain evening party in New York City. My mind produces one question over and over in my head while reading this, which is: “Why am I reading this?” Amongst the exaggerating descriptions that are mainly lists of objects and senses, which do portray a good picture, yet at the same time can be too much because they bore the reader with nonsense if they do not have nay relevance. I found Johnson’s story a reminder of how crucial the questions, “Why are people reading my writing? Why am I interesting?”, can be.
The reason why this story addresses these questions is because the story fails to answer them. The main plot of this story does not give the reader any interest to drive the story other than the curiosity of having something that might happen at the end. Perhaps, I am disappointed in a story that Johnson writes about and it is not exceeding out of the ordinary. However, that is what gives him the drive for the reader. Having a party and a mild friendly connection certainly brings truth to the story, but that is not enough to make the story interesting. What Johnson has to work with here is nothing more than a few friends getting together and a girl that almost attempts to have sex with the narrator, but does not because of a really great friendship. Although that is nice, it does not give the reader any reason to read this story for that ending.
Other issues with this story are that the descriptions of things are trying to portray an image that does not need to be so graphic. Instead of it making it entertaining, the excessive lists of details cuts into the plot and sometimes loses the reader in the process. Such an instance is when the narrator is putting on his heavy clothes to go outside. There does not need to be such a huge list of things he needs to put on in order to give the reader the idea that he needs to dress up in warm clothes on. By saying instead, “I put on my heavy warm winter gear and went out the door.” would suffice.
Some details gave great insight to particular situation. Such as when the character Lesley enters the party and hugs the narrator as though she has not seen him every morning on her jog. That draws an interesting perspective to the party and it can be used to send hinting messages about how excited she is to be there, or that there is something more going on behind this narrator than he lets us know. However, nothing of the sort supports this explanation and Johnson fails to use the detail.
This story simply needs something out of the ordinary to it. There is too much plain uneventful stuff going on that eventually lead to nothing very exciting. I also find that it has too much going on outside what is being said than in it, that is due to the mistake of putting too much focus on the details and not on an interesting adventurous plot that drives the reader through the story. There is much here already laying out it just needs something more interesting to happen.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Critique: “A Small Amount of Darkness”
Melisa Miller’s story, “A Small Amount of Darkness”, one of the best stories that have come out of this class. There is smooth flow and great descriptions that are not too wordy and give a great display of what is occurring in the story. The plot is also very unique and pressures the reader forward. There are also bits of humor that add more to the entertainment and joy of reading.
I find the best trait in this story to be it’s simplicity. There is not much symbolism and poetry that can sometimes bring down what is actually trying to be said. Instead of that, there is this easy readable tail about a girl and her black mysterious box that then sends a message about what it means to be special. What makes this story simple is how the details are efficient, they explain what needs to be explained and they are descriptive enough to give the reader a great specific idea of what is taking place. One great part I like a lot from this story was when Wanda had a ketchup stain on her shirt and her mom said “Oh Wanda, everyday.” I found this to be just some simple funny dialogue that is something a mother would say. Other great details are how the kids make fun of Wanda, such as when the boys “accidentally” kick a ball at her and then make a crack a the rocks she losses. Miller does a really great job at staying within the boundaries of youthful dialogue, even though the narrator reads in a much more adult voice.
Some small issues that can be added to the story that really did not play much of the focus to the entire message of the story was the that the mother does not seem to be depreciated as much as the ending seems to open up to. I find this reasoning to be true because Wanda still goes to her mother for advice and sees her as an important person in her life. There is no lack of that parental value with Wanda so it does not make much sense as to why there was some reason why Wanda needs an urge to hug her mother, someone who she already values her opinion.
This story impresses me in how well written and thought out the details are. What I will take from this story and try and add to my own is the attention to efficient and simple detail that gets the point across and is short so that the reader is not spending all day getting a little aspect. I must say that there many other ways to creating details for a character and I’m not sure if I want to use Miller’s example because a lot of my details I like to give also tell other stories and are explained through past actions. As for descriptions of actions Miller holds the best examples, which makes this story so great.
I find the best trait in this story to be it’s simplicity. There is not much symbolism and poetry that can sometimes bring down what is actually trying to be said. Instead of that, there is this easy readable tail about a girl and her black mysterious box that then sends a message about what it means to be special. What makes this story simple is how the details are efficient, they explain what needs to be explained and they are descriptive enough to give the reader a great specific idea of what is taking place. One great part I like a lot from this story was when Wanda had a ketchup stain on her shirt and her mom said “Oh Wanda, everyday.” I found this to be just some simple funny dialogue that is something a mother would say. Other great details are how the kids make fun of Wanda, such as when the boys “accidentally” kick a ball at her and then make a crack a the rocks she losses. Miller does a really great job at staying within the boundaries of youthful dialogue, even though the narrator reads in a much more adult voice.
Some small issues that can be added to the story that really did not play much of the focus to the entire message of the story was the that the mother does not seem to be depreciated as much as the ending seems to open up to. I find this reasoning to be true because Wanda still goes to her mother for advice and sees her as an important person in her life. There is no lack of that parental value with Wanda so it does not make much sense as to why there was some reason why Wanda needs an urge to hug her mother, someone who she already values her opinion.
This story impresses me in how well written and thought out the details are. What I will take from this story and try and add to my own is the attention to efficient and simple detail that gets the point across and is short so that the reader is not spending all day getting a little aspect. I must say that there many other ways to creating details for a character and I’m not sure if I want to use Miller’s example because a lot of my details I like to give also tell other stories and are explained through past actions. As for descriptions of actions Miller holds the best examples, which makes this story so great.
Critique: “Life Audition”
My initial reaction to this story is more of confusion than anything. I am trying to grasp mainly what is being said overall about the “life audition”. What key aspects that lead me to this confusion are that the writing seems so much more focused to explaining how the narrator, a father, is convincing his son about the theory of “the audition of life” than actually describing exactly what the theory is and all the details about it. I also found the story is more of someone telling me what happens than the story acting out what happens. Some scenes can be written in ways that make them flow more with the story. Even though I can take great interest in the plot and that drives me to read on, I still find it hard to comprehend an end to this story there is no clear message overall, the story still leaves me questioning what is this “audition of life“?
First or all, the story is structured in a way that I do not find easy to read and would not encourage this form of plot development unless the writer can make it work. What Stimmler has done is explain the “audition of life” by using the explanation that the narrator makes to his son in order to convince him to believe in it. That way of describing the “audition of life” works, there needs to be more explanation on that matter.
However, the real confusion is within the subject of the entire story, all linking back to the title. “Life Audition” is misleading towards what the message or main theme is actually trying to display. I find myself continuously asking, “what about the life audition?” and not getting my answers. There seems to be too much talk about an accident leaving a man battered and disgruntled along with several children being saddened and afraid of losing their father’s sanity due to tragic accident. I’m uncertain where Stimmler would like to take this story, but since she has chosen to talk more about the broken family and less about the “life audition” then it seems perfectly clear that the title does not fit.
As for some other issues with Stimmler’s story is she makes some great details that I wish were drawn out more in actions and things that the characters do rather than simply explained. Such an instance is when she describes the character Jenny as following the typical middle child “patterned” behavior while growing up. I am really interested in learning more about this “patterned” behavior of a middle child, for one I am a middle child and I do not know how Jenny and I could relate on that level, but also it is an interesting detail that could be used to clear up confusion as to how she becomes effected by the accident. There seems to be a lot of these unexplained details and that’s most likely where I got lost in my overall analysis of the story.
Mainly there are some points made about the story being unclear, which can be easily fixed by changing the title, which is putting a lot of weight down on the focus to the plot that does not line up with it. Also there needs to be more focused detail on how the children are reacting to the accident, and the details that are already there need to be explained more through action and dialogue with the narrator. I found this story to have an interesting philosophical perspective, but because of the story’s lack of vivid and clear description it brings down the value of that message.
First or all, the story is structured in a way that I do not find easy to read and would not encourage this form of plot development unless the writer can make it work. What Stimmler has done is explain the “audition of life” by using the explanation that the narrator makes to his son in order to convince him to believe in it. That way of describing the “audition of life” works, there needs to be more explanation on that matter.
However, the real confusion is within the subject of the entire story, all linking back to the title. “Life Audition” is misleading towards what the message or main theme is actually trying to display. I find myself continuously asking, “what about the life audition?” and not getting my answers. There seems to be too much talk about an accident leaving a man battered and disgruntled along with several children being saddened and afraid of losing their father’s sanity due to tragic accident. I’m uncertain where Stimmler would like to take this story, but since she has chosen to talk more about the broken family and less about the “life audition” then it seems perfectly clear that the title does not fit.
As for some other issues with Stimmler’s story is she makes some great details that I wish were drawn out more in actions and things that the characters do rather than simply explained. Such an instance is when she describes the character Jenny as following the typical middle child “patterned” behavior while growing up. I am really interested in learning more about this “patterned” behavior of a middle child, for one I am a middle child and I do not know how Jenny and I could relate on that level, but also it is an interesting detail that could be used to clear up confusion as to how she becomes effected by the accident. There seems to be a lot of these unexplained details and that’s most likely where I got lost in my overall analysis of the story.
Mainly there are some points made about the story being unclear, which can be easily fixed by changing the title, which is putting a lot of weight down on the focus to the plot that does not line up with it. Also there needs to be more focused detail on how the children are reacting to the accident, and the details that are already there need to be explained more through action and dialogue with the narrator. I found this story to have an interesting philosophical perspective, but because of the story’s lack of vivid and clear description it brings down the value of that message.
Critique: “One Hundred Thousand
Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”
By: Danielle Orner
Through this story, “One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”, I find Danielle running over the same road blocks of writing that I myself try to avoid doing. With the plot being great and inviting to a reader, the main aspects of this story that need to be addressed are within the details and some minor structural changes. Along with that there can be things added that will bring about a much more elaborated trail of circumstances for the reader to be guided along with.
My biggest issue with this story is the details. Although they seem to be vivid and a good majority are perfectly implemented, some lack their pertinence to the scene, or require a greater amount of connection for the reader effectively acquire exactly what Orner is trying to symbolize. One example of this “pertinence” issue I am addressing can be seen when the narrator, Ellen, describes this massive vivid memory of a high school religion class and there is this massive focus on that particular picture in the beginning of the story. The problem this draws out is that the only details the reader acquires from this vivid memory is that Ellen is not an unusual person, and the key aspect that she had to drop out of high school in order to help her overworked mother and her crippled father. These two significant details do not require the dream for their explanation. Also the details do not pertain to anything discussed within the chapter/segment. Orner completely turns the reader away from this action pact scene of a wife being left in the middle of the night, which is a golden opportunity to tune the reader in and draw interest. The instances of improper details being added into the story appear common, but not of such magnitude. To avoid further instances such as this in my own writing I have to go through and re-read the sections separately and make sure that I acquire the message I wish to draw from the scene.
I also find the sections, since they are not in a chronological order, to be very hard to read. In one instance a section talks about Ellen bringing her kids to her parent’s place and her talking to her dad, to Ellen flashing back to the diner on a rainy day. Orner only mentions a slight reference to the flash back with no mentioning specifically that there is a flash back. I get lost while re-reading this particular spot, which means that the transaction here is not clear enough to the readers. It is very risky at times to go back and forth with segments, perhaps using the author of Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, Michael Jamie-Becerra’s, model of placing titles on those segments would help the reader understand that there has been a change in the plot’s focus.
Overall, I find Orner’s descriptions to be very vivid and delightful to read. However, there is much confusion with certain details that do not need to be included, or do not successfully describe exactly what needs to be described. She has a lot of potential with this plot, it simply needs to be reorganized with more explanation and more vivid details such as her description she does of the mother’s house and the empty bed; and less like the cactus flower on the truck.
Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”
By: Danielle Orner
Through this story, “One Hundred Thousand Omelets and a Single Cactus Blossom”, I find Danielle running over the same road blocks of writing that I myself try to avoid doing. With the plot being great and inviting to a reader, the main aspects of this story that need to be addressed are within the details and some minor structural changes. Along with that there can be things added that will bring about a much more elaborated trail of circumstances for the reader to be guided along with.
My biggest issue with this story is the details. Although they seem to be vivid and a good majority are perfectly implemented, some lack their pertinence to the scene, or require a greater amount of connection for the reader effectively acquire exactly what Orner is trying to symbolize. One example of this “pertinence” issue I am addressing can be seen when the narrator, Ellen, describes this massive vivid memory of a high school religion class and there is this massive focus on that particular picture in the beginning of the story. The problem this draws out is that the only details the reader acquires from this vivid memory is that Ellen is not an unusual person, and the key aspect that she had to drop out of high school in order to help her overworked mother and her crippled father. These two significant details do not require the dream for their explanation. Also the details do not pertain to anything discussed within the chapter/segment. Orner completely turns the reader away from this action pact scene of a wife being left in the middle of the night, which is a golden opportunity to tune the reader in and draw interest. The instances of improper details being added into the story appear common, but not of such magnitude. To avoid further instances such as this in my own writing I have to go through and re-read the sections separately and make sure that I acquire the message I wish to draw from the scene.
I also find the sections, since they are not in a chronological order, to be very hard to read. In one instance a section talks about Ellen bringing her kids to her parent’s place and her talking to her dad, to Ellen flashing back to the diner on a rainy day. Orner only mentions a slight reference to the flash back with no mentioning specifically that there is a flash back. I get lost while re-reading this particular spot, which means that the transaction here is not clear enough to the readers. It is very risky at times to go back and forth with segments, perhaps using the author of Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, Michael Jamie-Becerra’s, model of placing titles on those segments would help the reader understand that there has been a change in the plot’s focus.
Overall, I find Orner’s descriptions to be very vivid and delightful to read. However, there is much confusion with certain details that do not need to be included, or do not successfully describe exactly what needs to be described. She has a lot of potential with this plot, it simply needs to be reorganized with more explanation and more vivid details such as her description she does of the mother’s house and the empty bed; and less like the cactus flower on the truck.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Disclaimer
I hate to make another appology, but here I am. The blog, for some reason, has butchered the spacing and indentation in my final story. So if it doesn't make sense, that's why. I'll most definitely bring in paper copies to remedy this. And again. Please don't crucify me.
Silver and Gold
I had been lying in bed for some amount of time and since I was in between jobs, sleep had become one of my new favorite activities. Most days I could sleep undisturbed until sometimes four o’clock in the afternoon, but yesterday I only caught fleeting hours in between tracing the cracks in the plaster ceiling with my eyes. Bleary grey light from the windows was bucketing itself onto the cracked, dusty brown boards of my apartment and blundering wind shook the windowpanes, ice filtering under the seal of the window. Brooklyn seems to lose its bustling, romantic charm on days like that. There’s no corner street vendors selling conglomerations of meat products, no ancient Jewish couples walking the streets hand in hand past the brownstone stoops with Cuban children play-fighting on them, no Haitian drug peddlers waiting around the corner for their broke and loyal customers. On days like that there’s only the wind, the dust of taxi-worn asphalt, the cold.
At some point during one of my brief lapses of unconsciousness, I rolled to my right side to pull a cigarette from my pack. It was sitting on the stack of New Yorker’s, Rolling Stone’s, and random poetry leaflets from The Blue Note and other random jazz clubs in the Village. I had noticed the ten butts in the ashtray on the floor next to the stack. It meant I had been in and out of bliss for about seven hours. I’d had a nagging at the back of my head that kept telling me that I had something to do, but I couldn’t remember what. As I sat myself upright and lit my cigarette I cursed whatever the something was. Once I’d finished I stubbed out the butt in the ashtray, settled back down into the groove in my pillow, and pulled my only two sheets, mismatched green and blue, up to my chin.
What seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes there was a pounding on my door. The sound echoed off the bare white walls, through the hollow of my small oven, and over the cold floorboards and made me think for a moment that it had been going on for some time. This thought escaped my mind fairly quickly as a headache pushed its way to the small space under my temples. Three more even, dull crashes and I had sat bolt upright to pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger.
“I’ll be right there,” I barked as I pulled on the pants I’d worn the day before. I didn’t bother to dig a shirt from the hamper by the window despite the chill of the room as I was only concerned with making the pounding on my door and in my head stop. I winced as two more, seemingly final, thumpings rattled the chain of my lock as I approached the door. With my hands busy fussing with the brass door chain and the brushed chrome deadbolt, I had made a pact with myself to beat whoever was on the other side of the door absolutely senseless.
“WHAT!?”
My eyes had gone out of focus as they tried to adjust from the spilling dim sunlight in my room to the even dimmer, single bulb lighting the narrow hallway. I couldn’t make out any distinct features as the figure pushed past me, and I just caught their “oh, fuck you” muttered underneath their breath as they stepped into the doorway.
“Who are you and what the fuck do you think you’re doing,” I asked the figure as I tried to crush the dried mucus from the corners of my eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too, Jack”
I shut the door and sighed when I recognized the smooth feminine alto.
“Oh. Shit. Rose… Hi. What the hell’s the problem with you knockin’ on my door like you’re the goddamn police?”
My eyes had begun to adjust back to the light in the room and I could see Rose’s pea coated arm cocked and her hand on her hip. Her clipped-short straight brown hair jutted in nearly every direction and the grey in the room caught her red highlights, framing her glaring face.
“What’s your problem? Lesley, Will, and Andi called me and told me they couldn’t get in touch with you. You just deciding not to pick up your phone now?”
I groaned. What had been nagging at me and keeping me awake was that I was going to be hosting a birthday party for our friend Art. I’d met Art about a year before I graduated when Andi dragged his awkward, puffy-haired Jewish ass out to Bubba Gump’s in Times Square for a celebratory round of Cajun shrimp and beers on Mardi Gras. After that night Rose, me, my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Carli, Will, and Andi kind of took Art in under our collective nightcrawling, Bacardi swigging wing. He turned out to be a pretty wild drunk, relatively anyway to the theorem testing math nerd he normally was, and we found out all too late that he plays an insane game of 8-ball.
Art and I, though, didn’t quite click like he did with the others. He grew up in the good area of Long Island, his parents were still together after 35 years, and he had been prepped so thoroughly for college and grad school that he joked about being full grown with a briefcase. I hadn’t had that. I was born in the back of a taxi cab between West 47th and 11th, just a few blocks from the ER of St. Vincent’s. I didn’t, and still don’t, know who my mother was and my father snuck out on me in the night when I was ten. I’d lived with my aunt and went to St. Peter’s in Belleville, New Jersey and got no preparation for life after high school. I changed my major from Art to Business to Political Science before I settled on English in my junior year at New York City College. When we would talk to each other I was either too crude for his tastes or he would embarrass me by bringing up some intellectual topic I had no knowledge of. Nevertheless I considered him a good, though not very intriguing, guy and we maintained a good acquaintanceship within our circle.
I smiled and took a step back, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door. I hooked a thumb at the phone on top of my bookcase.
“Phone service got cut off.”
“You didn’t bother to pay the bill, did you?”
“Yep.”
She rolled her eyes and I crossed the room to pick two cigarettes out of my pack.
“Hey. I’m sorry I totally blanked. What time is it?”
She lifted her arm and shook her black sleeve down so she could read her thin-banded, gold Seiko.
“Five thirty. We have maybe three hours before everyone shows up.” She, then, turned from me and took a look around my apartment.
“When was the last time you cleaned up in here?”
I handed her a cigarette, placed the other between my lips, and lit her cigarette before my own.
“Couldn’t tell you. When was the last time you were here? Like two weeks, maybe.” I exhaled and surveyed the place as well. “It’s not like it’s a total mess.”
For me, it wasn’t bad. But I guess the sink full of dishes and the adjacent countertop speckled with marinara and Chinese gravy, the overflowing hamper by the window, the LPs and CDs splayed all over the floor at the foot of my bed, and the three full ashtrays by my bed might have scared away some people. She cocked an eyebrow in that smug way that made me want to either slap her or smother her lips with mine just so she wouldn’t put on that condescending face towards me. I met her eyes and then looked away.
“Nevermind.”
“You look like you haven’t even washed your hair in almost a week. So, let’s get this place, and you, cleaned up enough for company.”
After a shower, two broken plates and my New Orleans shot glass, two bags of garbage, a half hour search for a broom and dustpan, and an hour reorganizing my music my room was deemed presentable. We still had an hour before people would show up and we decided to get some supplies considering that I’d drunk all of my own alcohol and my refrigerator was chock full of condiments and a few boxes of empty Chinese food. I had bundled myself up in a zip-up hoodie, my navy blue mechanic’s jacket, and my steel-toes and followed Rose down the six flights of stairs out onto the gunmetal street. We walked side by side and every so often a light gust would blow her smell up my nostrils. Cigarettes, tangerines, pine or some sort of earthy scented incense that she burned in her place by the windowsill.
We returned with two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cheap bottle of champagne, a two liter of Jack Daniels, and two large bottles of Coca Cola. We both set our bags down by the door as soon as I’d opened it, the two of us panting. Rose half-stumbled towards my freshly made bed and collapsed on it, vowing that she would start smoking less. I was still bent over gasping and when I’d caught my breath I willed my legs to carry me to the closet to take the fold-out chairs and collapsible card table so everyone wouldn’t have to sit on my bed when they arrived.
Rose lazed on my bed, propping her head on her hand to watch me set up the stow-and-go dining room. Once I had finished, I walked to the bed and pushed Rose’s feet off the edge so I could sit. I was intensely dizzy and mildly overheated from all the up and down of setting up and un-sticking the legs of the chairs. So I leaned back against the wall and unzipped my jacket and hoodie, reached for my pack of cigarettes, then sidled out of my outerwear.
“You’re gonna smoke another one? I’m not even that bad.”
“I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Smoking will keep me awake.”
She had taken her coat off while I had been setting up and had rolled it up to make a makeshift pillow. She curled her legs into herself and she propped her body up further, moving her jacket under the curve of her side. I lit my cigarette from my slumped position and quickly took in what she had been wearing under her plain black pea coat. She had on a pair of black slacks and an olive half-turtleneck under a black blouse which she’d left unbuttoned. I closed my eyes as I exhaled, the cigarette dangling from my lips. Sometimes I wondered if she dressed like that specifically to make me crazy. I, then, noticed the absence of the sustaining cancer and blew the rest of the smoke through my nose. I opened my eyes and saw her looking at me in a sidelong way, sucking greedily on the end of my cigarette. She reached over the edge and tapped the ash off the end in to the ashtray – never breaking sly eye contact – before she exhaled and placed the cigarette back in my mouth. She pushed her coat onto the floor and proceeded to stretch her legs out over my lap, her pointed black boots dangling just above the fabric on the other side of my legs.
“How much time have we got now?”
“I don’t know. Will’s usually the ‘we’ve got to be on time’ person, but Andi; you know Andi. She’ll take a lifetime to get anywhere. Plus they have to pick up Art. I figure we’ve got at least another hour.”
“So what was the point of rushing me to clean the place and get shit if you knew all that?”
She shrugged and reclined further
“I kind of just wanted to get out of my place. Marie went home and said she wouldn’t be back for a week. She told me that her brother’s gone out of state with his wife on a vacation. So she’s stuck babysitting their kids and I miss having company.”
I sighed and held up my cigarette so she could see the long stem of ash. She rolled over to grab an ashtray just enough so that her Old English script tattoo on her hip of “Bold As Love” was exposed. I held the cigarette over the ashtray just as the ash fell of its own volition.
“Thanks.”
I took the ashtray from her and she returned to reclining, crossed one leg over the other. We sat there for a while in silence as I finished my cigarette, listening to each other breathe.
“So what’s going on with your job? Will told me that you don’t have one right now. Did IG not need an extra editor or did you manage to piss off part of the liberal reich?”
“No. I quit. Too much drama going on in the office. People were just getting into all these heated debates about absolutely nothing. Like whether or not terminally ill children deserve all the charity they get from things like “Make A Wish”. Shit like that.”
“You serious? That’s too funny.” She pushed her head back into my pillow as she let her throaty laugh echo off the high ceilings.
“Yeah. It was a little ridiculous. I’m looking into trying to find work over at Harper & Row. They have a couple positions open, but it’s competitive; so I don’t know how that’ll pan out. I’ll fall on my feet, though.”
She sat up a bit and smiled at me before reaching in the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes.
“So what’ve you been up too? You’ve been all over, from what I’ve heard from Lesley. DC one day, Philly the next, and then Boston?”
“Yeah. We have a new boss now and he really likes my work, so he’s sending me on a lot more assignments. I don’t think it’ll be for too long though. At least I hope not. Reporting and writing from the road is starting to give me the shakes.”
I let out a low chuckle and looked out the window, the sun was about to finally go down and the ice sky had faded to a black-purple.
“Hey. Do you know what Andi and them are bringing to eat?”
“I think maybe a whole duck from Penang and some kind of cake. That’s what Will said he’d planned.”
She moved her hands, which were resting on her stomach, so she was holding the backs of her upper arms and she moved her legs off my lap back to the curled up position they were in earlier.
“Cold, huh?”
“Yeah. You must be used to it, but I’m actually freezing.”
“Let me fiddle with the radiator real quick.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
I walked over in between the windows and knelt down to unscrew the round knob that regulated the flow of hot water. I waited a minute before touching it quickly to test if it had started to warm up, if the pipes hadn’t frozen. I pulled my warm hand away and stood up, satisfied. I turned and walked back to the bed and picked up an ashtray. I’d thought I might as well start in on the JD and on my way to the door I dropped the ashtray on the table and picked up the bag with the sweet Tennessee brew. I picked up two short glasses that had been drying on the countertop and placed everything on the table. As I was cracking the seal on the bottle, Rose stepped out of the bathroom, the sound of toilet water gurgling behind her. I looked up from the bottle and met a half indignant stare.
“Hey, we were going to save that for when the party started.”
I looked from her to the bottle then back up to her and finished unscrewing the cap.
“Well, it’s open now. It tastes best when it’s freshly opened, and I don’t want to waste that taste.”
She shook her head, her hair waving a bit more than earlier as her hairspray had lost some of its hold. She pulled up a chair across from me and leant forward, her elbows on the table and her hands supporting her long face.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” and she pushed her glass across the scuffed brown tabletop. I poured each of us half a glass and she stood up again to get ice cubes for her drink. We lit cigarettes and sat sipping our drinks for a while, again in silence, enjoying the warm sweetness trickling down our throats.
I smiled and thought back to the first time I saw her. I’d seen her here and there during my bar crawls back in college. She worked the bar like most women in New York do: posting up at a corner and looking bored, sexy, waiting for a hopeful sucker to buy her a drink. I was usually with Carli at some table near the center of the room sipping on a Stella Artois while Carli munched idly on whatever low-cal dish the place was serving. I had also taken a few classes with her, though I had not noticed her in them – I was usually messing around on my laptop and not paying any attention.
We first actually met after a poetry reading by Donald Hall. Andi had gone with Rose and while I was standing outside smoking, the two approached me and Andi introduced us. She explained to me that both Rose and I were English majors and that we both wanted to do something in journalism. In the light of the lamppost I saw that she looked like one of those atypical feminists: short, thin hair dyed a red-purple, mildly conservative, loose grey wool sweater, dangling gold earrings, tight, plain brown pants that were tucked into her halfway knee high black leather boots. I remember her eyeing me with some sort of amused suspicion, that sly grin plastered under her slightly hooked nose. I had brushed off the look, though it bugged the shit out of me, and smiled with my cigarette still clamped between my lips. We shook hands and exchanged hellos and Andi mentioned that they were going to meet Will at a bar, so she made the suggestion that I tag along. That night I had made plans to meet Carli at her place to watch some movie I don’t remember anymore, but I accepted Andi’s offer and we headed out to Manhattan on the D train.
Andi spent most of that night knocking back shots of tequila to relieve the stress of mediating between me and Rose as we antagonized each other. We argued back and forth about jazz music and whether or not Miles Davis could or would trump Coltrane, whether or not Dickenson would have been lovers with Plath, and how blatantly Giuliani abused his power in between taking long swigs from our beers or glasses of whiskey. The whole time we had on these brilliant, smug smiles to try to further aggravate the other – we were having fun. After that night we started hanging out before and after class to smoke cigarettes outside Wagner and bitch about professors or exchange notes and books. We went out to some clubs in Harlem where we’d sit on the outer rim drinking G ‘n’ Ts and admiring the improv jazz and blues players. During finals we’d hang out in each other’s rooms and review dates, research articles, do a few lines to stay awake, and listen to Dylan.
Carli eventually accused me of cheating on her with Rose. And in some ways I guess she was right. I had started to become dissatisfied with Carli and felt like we never had anything we could talk about outside of where to eat or drink and when we could fuck. Rose could read me. She could challenge me intellectually and we could talk for hours about anything or not even make eye contact for hours without there being any awkward silence. When Carli and I broke up, Rose asked specifically if she was the reason why. I reassured her that it was all because I didn’t want to waste Carli’s time; that I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Though Rose wasn’t the cause of the end of my relationship, Carli distanced herself so much from our circle that she changed her major from Religious Studies to Business Management so she wouldn’t even have to be on the same side of campus as us.
There was finally a knock and Andi’s childlike voice warbling through the door.
“We’re heeere!”
We set our drinks down, wiped our lips, and stubbed out our cigarettes in the tray in the middle of the table. I walked to the door and re-smoothed my dress shirt before turning the faux crystal door handle.
“Hey! Jackie-boy!” Will grabbed my hand with his large one and shook hard.
“Hiiii! Jack, you look great! Oh, Rose. When did you get here?” She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and walked past me with the bottle of Ketel One that they had bought on the way over.
I’d managed to break free of Will’s grip and patted him on the back to usher him, Andi, and the crispy, orange smelling duck inside.
“Jack!” Lesley wrapped her arms around my neck as if we hadn’t walked around Central Park on Tuesday when we bumped into each other while she was taking her daily jog.
Art, being Art, had hung at the back of the crowd and after pulling Lesley off of my neck I greeted him as warmly as I could.
“Heeyy! Art! Birthday boy, come on in here.”
“Hey, Jack. Good to see you again.” He extended his hand and shook mine softly. He was just as reserved as ever and spoke with an even more nasal voice because of the cold outside.
The rest of the night went on without that many problems. I had to share silverware with Lesley because I didn’t have enough for everyone, Will got belligerently drunk halfway through and Andi had to take him out into the hall to talk him down, and Lesley gave Art a lap dance which he passed out halfway through because of the vodka that Rose and I kept feeding him. After we’d revived him, he rushed for the bathroom and vomited for what seemed like half an hour. Andi and Will, who could barely stand themselves, announced that they’d take Art back to his apartment. And Lesley drunkenly remarked under her breath that she would have given Art a happy ending if he weren’t already so drunk. After everyone had taken off, Rose and I sat across the table from one another again sipping smoke from our cigarettes and nursing our glasses of the last of the champagne.
Nina Simone’s “Wild Is The Wind” was playing quietly in the background when Rose broke the silence.
“They were in rare form tonight, huh?” We had been keeping up with each other pretty well the entire night – pouring each other glasses of wine and whiskey. Her Irish blood kept her above the rim of the glass where most others would have passed out with their head down on the table.
“Yeah, they were. I can’t believe that Lesley said that she’d sleep with Art. She must have smoked up or something before she got here. She was ridiculous.”
Rose half closed her eyes and smiled, sipping from her glass.
“I’d love to see that happen. Art needs to get laid. Since he got dumped by… What’s her name?”
“Amanda.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s had sex with anybody since Amanda dumped him.”
“Wasn’t that like a year or something ago?”
“Scary, huh?”
I just shook my head and kept looking down at my glass. I was catching up with him as I was going on a six month dry spell, though mine was intentional and self imposed. I didn’t feel like I needed the hang-ups and baggage of a lover.
“You heading out soon? Cause’ I think I wanna get to sleep.”
She exhaled, the smoke coming out in one long stream, and made a disappointed face.
“I don’t know.” She let her voice trail off as she lifted the cigarette to her lips again.
“I don’t really have enough cash for a taxi or a new Metro Card and I sure as shit don’t wanna walk home.”
For the first time, there was a semi-awkward silence that hung with the foggy smoke. I looked over her shoulder at the closet.
“Well, if you really don’t wanna go back I have a futon mattress in the closet. But it’s kind of lumpy.”
Her reaction was a bit quicker than I’d expected.
“That’d be great. I don’t mind about shitty beds. Remember the beds back in college?”
“Guess you can sleep on anything once you’ve slept on those bricks.”
When I reached to tap my ash in the tray on the table, just within my heavy-lidded field of view, I noticed a light smile gracing the corners of her mouth. I leaned back and downed the rest of my drink and then stood up to fetch the mattress from the top shelf of the closet. Once I rolled out the mattress and set down some sheets for her to sleep on, she stepped into the bathroom and got ready to go to sleep. I waited outside the door for my turn and when she reemerged she had her black boots and socks in hand and her black blouse and bra hanging on her arm. I tried to ignore the sexy black lace and the light flushing in her cheeks from the alcohol and because I’d startled her a bit. She smelled like my toothpaste, cigarettes, and her vanilla spray which she’d pulled from her bag before she went in.
I had my hands against the top of the sink with the water running and I was looking myself in the eye in the mirror. I repeated “just go to sleep, just go to sleep” over and over in my head as I tried not to let the alcohol make me do something I would regret in the morning. She was sexy and cool and a woman; not a little girl. She was everything I wanted at that moment, but I knew I would ruin the friendship and that was something I could not bear. I splashed my face with hot water, ran a wet hand through my hair, and swished some Listerine around in my mouth. When I walked into the room, Rose was already curled up and asleep on the floor, her purse and boots by her head, blouse folded around her bra by her feet. I smiled and went around the room turning off, first, the stereo and the other lights. I took off my shirt as I sat down on my bed and dropped it on the floor. I let my body fall back, crossed my legs, and put my hands behind my head before I fell asleep.
In the early morning I slowly rose out of sleep when I felt a tickle in my nostril and a weight against my chest. For a moment I panicked. I lifted my left hand to rub my eyes and I looked down onto the top of Rose’s small head. Both of us were still clothed and I breathed relief. I had fallen asleep belly up and she had her hand on my chest, she was just slightly curled up next to me, her body close. I swallowed hard as I felt the rise and fall of her breasts against my chest, and she slowly rose her head to meet my eyes. She blinked at me and half-smiled before putting her head back against my collarbone and reaching across my chest to bring me closer. I didn’t breathe for a moment and I pulled one hand from behind my head to put an arm around her back. Were it any other woman, by that point I would have been aggravatingly aroused; but I wasn’t. I was still looking down on her auburn head as the blue sun rose above the buildings, and I leaned my head back, sighing. It was going to be another grey day, but right then I didn’t mind. Right then I wouldn’t have minded to lay there forever.
At some point during one of my brief lapses of unconsciousness, I rolled to my right side to pull a cigarette from my pack. It was sitting on the stack of New Yorker’s, Rolling Stone’s, and random poetry leaflets from The Blue Note and other random jazz clubs in the Village. I had noticed the ten butts in the ashtray on the floor next to the stack. It meant I had been in and out of bliss for about seven hours. I’d had a nagging at the back of my head that kept telling me that I had something to do, but I couldn’t remember what. As I sat myself upright and lit my cigarette I cursed whatever the something was. Once I’d finished I stubbed out the butt in the ashtray, settled back down into the groove in my pillow, and pulled my only two sheets, mismatched green and blue, up to my chin.
What seemed like minutes after I had shut my eyes there was a pounding on my door. The sound echoed off the bare white walls, through the hollow of my small oven, and over the cold floorboards and made me think for a moment that it had been going on for some time. This thought escaped my mind fairly quickly as a headache pushed its way to the small space under my temples. Three more even, dull crashes and I had sat bolt upright to pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger.
“I’ll be right there,” I barked as I pulled on the pants I’d worn the day before. I didn’t bother to dig a shirt from the hamper by the window despite the chill of the room as I was only concerned with making the pounding on my door and in my head stop. I winced as two more, seemingly final, thumpings rattled the chain of my lock as I approached the door. With my hands busy fussing with the brass door chain and the brushed chrome deadbolt, I had made a pact with myself to beat whoever was on the other side of the door absolutely senseless.
“WHAT!?”
My eyes had gone out of focus as they tried to adjust from the spilling dim sunlight in my room to the even dimmer, single bulb lighting the narrow hallway. I couldn’t make out any distinct features as the figure pushed past me, and I just caught their “oh, fuck you” muttered underneath their breath as they stepped into the doorway.
“Who are you and what the fuck do you think you’re doing,” I asked the figure as I tried to crush the dried mucus from the corners of my eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too, Jack”
I shut the door and sighed when I recognized the smooth feminine alto.
“Oh. Shit. Rose… Hi. What the hell’s the problem with you knockin’ on my door like you’re the goddamn police?”
My eyes had begun to adjust back to the light in the room and I could see Rose’s pea coated arm cocked and her hand on her hip. Her clipped-short straight brown hair jutted in nearly every direction and the grey in the room caught her red highlights, framing her glaring face.
“What’s your problem? Lesley, Will, and Andi called me and told me they couldn’t get in touch with you. You just deciding not to pick up your phone now?”
I groaned. What had been nagging at me and keeping me awake was that I was going to be hosting a birthday party for our friend Art. I’d met Art about a year before I graduated when Andi dragged his awkward, puffy-haired Jewish ass out to Bubba Gump’s in Times Square for a celebratory round of Cajun shrimp and beers on Mardi Gras. After that night Rose, me, my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Carli, Will, and Andi kind of took Art in under our collective nightcrawling, Bacardi swigging wing. He turned out to be a pretty wild drunk, relatively anyway to the theorem testing math nerd he normally was, and we found out all too late that he plays an insane game of 8-ball.
Art and I, though, didn’t quite click like he did with the others. He grew up in the good area of Long Island, his parents were still together after 35 years, and he had been prepped so thoroughly for college and grad school that he joked about being full grown with a briefcase. I hadn’t had that. I was born in the back of a taxi cab between West 47th and 11th, just a few blocks from the ER of St. Vincent’s. I didn’t, and still don’t, know who my mother was and my father snuck out on me in the night when I was ten. I’d lived with my aunt and went to St. Peter’s in Belleville, New Jersey and got no preparation for life after high school. I changed my major from Art to Business to Political Science before I settled on English in my junior year at New York City College. When we would talk to each other I was either too crude for his tastes or he would embarrass me by bringing up some intellectual topic I had no knowledge of. Nevertheless I considered him a good, though not very intriguing, guy and we maintained a good acquaintanceship within our circle.
I smiled and took a step back, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door. I hooked a thumb at the phone on top of my bookcase.
“Phone service got cut off.”
“You didn’t bother to pay the bill, did you?”
“Yep.”
She rolled her eyes and I crossed the room to pick two cigarettes out of my pack.
“Hey. I’m sorry I totally blanked. What time is it?”
She lifted her arm and shook her black sleeve down so she could read her thin-banded, gold Seiko.
“Five thirty. We have maybe three hours before everyone shows up.” She, then, turned from me and took a look around my apartment.
“When was the last time you cleaned up in here?”
I handed her a cigarette, placed the other between my lips, and lit her cigarette before my own.
“Couldn’t tell you. When was the last time you were here? Like two weeks, maybe.” I exhaled and surveyed the place as well. “It’s not like it’s a total mess.”
For me, it wasn’t bad. But I guess the sink full of dishes and the adjacent countertop speckled with marinara and Chinese gravy, the overflowing hamper by the window, the LPs and CDs splayed all over the floor at the foot of my bed, and the three full ashtrays by my bed might have scared away some people. She cocked an eyebrow in that smug way that made me want to either slap her or smother her lips with mine just so she wouldn’t put on that condescending face towards me. I met her eyes and then looked away.
“Nevermind.”
“You look like you haven’t even washed your hair in almost a week. So, let’s get this place, and you, cleaned up enough for company.”
~~~
After a shower, two broken plates and my New Orleans shot glass, two bags of garbage, a half hour search for a broom and dustpan, and an hour reorganizing my music my room was deemed presentable. We still had an hour before people would show up and we decided to get some supplies considering that I’d drunk all of my own alcohol and my refrigerator was chock full of condiments and a few boxes of empty Chinese food. I had bundled myself up in a zip-up hoodie, my navy blue mechanic’s jacket, and my steel-toes and followed Rose down the six flights of stairs out onto the gunmetal street. We walked side by side and every so often a light gust would blow her smell up my nostrils. Cigarettes, tangerines, pine or some sort of earthy scented incense that she burned in her place by the windowsill.
We returned with two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cheap bottle of champagne, a two liter of Jack Daniels, and two large bottles of Coca Cola. We both set our bags down by the door as soon as I’d opened it, the two of us panting. Rose half-stumbled towards my freshly made bed and collapsed on it, vowing that she would start smoking less. I was still bent over gasping and when I’d caught my breath I willed my legs to carry me to the closet to take the fold-out chairs and collapsible card table so everyone wouldn’t have to sit on my bed when they arrived.
Rose lazed on my bed, propping her head on her hand to watch me set up the stow-and-go dining room. Once I had finished, I walked to the bed and pushed Rose’s feet off the edge so I could sit. I was intensely dizzy and mildly overheated from all the up and down of setting up and un-sticking the legs of the chairs. So I leaned back against the wall and unzipped my jacket and hoodie, reached for my pack of cigarettes, then sidled out of my outerwear.
“You’re gonna smoke another one? I’m not even that bad.”
“I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Smoking will keep me awake.”
She had taken her coat off while I had been setting up and had rolled it up to make a makeshift pillow. She curled her legs into herself and she propped her body up further, moving her jacket under the curve of her side. I lit my cigarette from my slumped position and quickly took in what she had been wearing under her plain black pea coat. She had on a pair of black slacks and an olive half-turtleneck under a black blouse which she’d left unbuttoned. I closed my eyes as I exhaled, the cigarette dangling from my lips. Sometimes I wondered if she dressed like that specifically to make me crazy. I, then, noticed the absence of the sustaining cancer and blew the rest of the smoke through my nose. I opened my eyes and saw her looking at me in a sidelong way, sucking greedily on the end of my cigarette. She reached over the edge and tapped the ash off the end in to the ashtray – never breaking sly eye contact – before she exhaled and placed the cigarette back in my mouth. She pushed her coat onto the floor and proceeded to stretch her legs out over my lap, her pointed black boots dangling just above the fabric on the other side of my legs.
“How much time have we got now?”
“I don’t know. Will’s usually the ‘we’ve got to be on time’ person, but Andi; you know Andi. She’ll take a lifetime to get anywhere. Plus they have to pick up Art. I figure we’ve got at least another hour.”
“So what was the point of rushing me to clean the place and get shit if you knew all that?”
She shrugged and reclined further
“I kind of just wanted to get out of my place. Marie went home and said she wouldn’t be back for a week. She told me that her brother’s gone out of state with his wife on a vacation. So she’s stuck babysitting their kids and I miss having company.”
I sighed and held up my cigarette so she could see the long stem of ash. She rolled over to grab an ashtray just enough so that her Old English script tattoo on her hip of “Bold As Love” was exposed. I held the cigarette over the ashtray just as the ash fell of its own volition.
“Thanks.”
I took the ashtray from her and she returned to reclining, crossed one leg over the other. We sat there for a while in silence as I finished my cigarette, listening to each other breathe.
“So what’s going on with your job? Will told me that you don’t have one right now. Did IG not need an extra editor or did you manage to piss off part of the liberal reich?”
“No. I quit. Too much drama going on in the office. People were just getting into all these heated debates about absolutely nothing. Like whether or not terminally ill children deserve all the charity they get from things like “Make A Wish”. Shit like that.”
“You serious? That’s too funny.” She pushed her head back into my pillow as she let her throaty laugh echo off the high ceilings.
“Yeah. It was a little ridiculous. I’m looking into trying to find work over at Harper & Row. They have a couple positions open, but it’s competitive; so I don’t know how that’ll pan out. I’ll fall on my feet, though.”
She sat up a bit and smiled at me before reaching in the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes.
“So what’ve you been up too? You’ve been all over, from what I’ve heard from Lesley. DC one day, Philly the next, and then Boston?”
“Yeah. We have a new boss now and he really likes my work, so he’s sending me on a lot more assignments. I don’t think it’ll be for too long though. At least I hope not. Reporting and writing from the road is starting to give me the shakes.”
I let out a low chuckle and looked out the window, the sun was about to finally go down and the ice sky had faded to a black-purple.
“Hey. Do you know what Andi and them are bringing to eat?”
“I think maybe a whole duck from Penang and some kind of cake. That’s what Will said he’d planned.”
She moved her hands, which were resting on her stomach, so she was holding the backs of her upper arms and she moved her legs off my lap back to the curled up position they were in earlier.
“Cold, huh?”
“Yeah. You must be used to it, but I’m actually freezing.”
“Let me fiddle with the radiator real quick.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
I walked over in between the windows and knelt down to unscrew the round knob that regulated the flow of hot water. I waited a minute before touching it quickly to test if it had started to warm up, if the pipes hadn’t frozen. I pulled my warm hand away and stood up, satisfied. I turned and walked back to the bed and picked up an ashtray. I’d thought I might as well start in on the JD and on my way to the door I dropped the ashtray on the table and picked up the bag with the sweet Tennessee brew. I picked up two short glasses that had been drying on the countertop and placed everything on the table. As I was cracking the seal on the bottle, Rose stepped out of the bathroom, the sound of toilet water gurgling behind her. I looked up from the bottle and met a half indignant stare.
“Hey, we were going to save that for when the party started.”
I looked from her to the bottle then back up to her and finished unscrewing the cap.
“Well, it’s open now. It tastes best when it’s freshly opened, and I don’t want to waste that taste.”
She shook her head, her hair waving a bit more than earlier as her hairspray had lost some of its hold. She pulled up a chair across from me and leant forward, her elbows on the table and her hands supporting her long face.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” and she pushed her glass across the scuffed brown tabletop. I poured each of us half a glass and she stood up again to get ice cubes for her drink. We lit cigarettes and sat sipping our drinks for a while, again in silence, enjoying the warm sweetness trickling down our throats.
I smiled and thought back to the first time I saw her. I’d seen her here and there during my bar crawls back in college. She worked the bar like most women in New York do: posting up at a corner and looking bored, sexy, waiting for a hopeful sucker to buy her a drink. I was usually with Carli at some table near the center of the room sipping on a Stella Artois while Carli munched idly on whatever low-cal dish the place was serving. I had also taken a few classes with her, though I had not noticed her in them – I was usually messing around on my laptop and not paying any attention.
We first actually met after a poetry reading by Donald Hall. Andi had gone with Rose and while I was standing outside smoking, the two approached me and Andi introduced us. She explained to me that both Rose and I were English majors and that we both wanted to do something in journalism. In the light of the lamppost I saw that she looked like one of those atypical feminists: short, thin hair dyed a red-purple, mildly conservative, loose grey wool sweater, dangling gold earrings, tight, plain brown pants that were tucked into her halfway knee high black leather boots. I remember her eyeing me with some sort of amused suspicion, that sly grin plastered under her slightly hooked nose. I had brushed off the look, though it bugged the shit out of me, and smiled with my cigarette still clamped between my lips. We shook hands and exchanged hellos and Andi mentioned that they were going to meet Will at a bar, so she made the suggestion that I tag along. That night I had made plans to meet Carli at her place to watch some movie I don’t remember anymore, but I accepted Andi’s offer and we headed out to Manhattan on the D train.
Andi spent most of that night knocking back shots of tequila to relieve the stress of mediating between me and Rose as we antagonized each other. We argued back and forth about jazz music and whether or not Miles Davis could or would trump Coltrane, whether or not Dickenson would have been lovers with Plath, and how blatantly Giuliani abused his power in between taking long swigs from our beers or glasses of whiskey. The whole time we had on these brilliant, smug smiles to try to further aggravate the other – we were having fun. After that night we started hanging out before and after class to smoke cigarettes outside Wagner and bitch about professors or exchange notes and books. We went out to some clubs in Harlem where we’d sit on the outer rim drinking G ‘n’ Ts and admiring the improv jazz and blues players. During finals we’d hang out in each other’s rooms and review dates, research articles, do a few lines to stay awake, and listen to Dylan.
Carli eventually accused me of cheating on her with Rose. And in some ways I guess she was right. I had started to become dissatisfied with Carli and felt like we never had anything we could talk about outside of where to eat or drink and when we could fuck. Rose could read me. She could challenge me intellectually and we could talk for hours about anything or not even make eye contact for hours without there being any awkward silence. When Carli and I broke up, Rose asked specifically if she was the reason why. I reassured her that it was all because I didn’t want to waste Carli’s time; that I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Though Rose wasn’t the cause of the end of my relationship, Carli distanced herself so much from our circle that she changed her major from Religious Studies to Business Management so she wouldn’t even have to be on the same side of campus as us.
There was finally a knock and Andi’s childlike voice warbling through the door.
“We’re heeere!”
We set our drinks down, wiped our lips, and stubbed out our cigarettes in the tray in the middle of the table. I walked to the door and re-smoothed my dress shirt before turning the faux crystal door handle.
“Hey! Jackie-boy!” Will grabbed my hand with his large one and shook hard.
“Hiiii! Jack, you look great! Oh, Rose. When did you get here?” She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and walked past me with the bottle of Ketel One that they had bought on the way over.
I’d managed to break free of Will’s grip and patted him on the back to usher him, Andi, and the crispy, orange smelling duck inside.
“Jack!” Lesley wrapped her arms around my neck as if we hadn’t walked around Central Park on Tuesday when we bumped into each other while she was taking her daily jog.
Art, being Art, had hung at the back of the crowd and after pulling Lesley off of my neck I greeted him as warmly as I could.
“Heeyy! Art! Birthday boy, come on in here.”
“Hey, Jack. Good to see you again.” He extended his hand and shook mine softly. He was just as reserved as ever and spoke with an even more nasal voice because of the cold outside.
The rest of the night went on without that many problems. I had to share silverware with Lesley because I didn’t have enough for everyone, Will got belligerently drunk halfway through and Andi had to take him out into the hall to talk him down, and Lesley gave Art a lap dance which he passed out halfway through because of the vodka that Rose and I kept feeding him. After we’d revived him, he rushed for the bathroom and vomited for what seemed like half an hour. Andi and Will, who could barely stand themselves, announced that they’d take Art back to his apartment. And Lesley drunkenly remarked under her breath that she would have given Art a happy ending if he weren’t already so drunk. After everyone had taken off, Rose and I sat across the table from one another again sipping smoke from our cigarettes and nursing our glasses of the last of the champagne.
Nina Simone’s “Wild Is The Wind” was playing quietly in the background when Rose broke the silence.
“They were in rare form tonight, huh?” We had been keeping up with each other pretty well the entire night – pouring each other glasses of wine and whiskey. Her Irish blood kept her above the rim of the glass where most others would have passed out with their head down on the table.
“Yeah, they were. I can’t believe that Lesley said that she’d sleep with Art. She must have smoked up or something before she got here. She was ridiculous.”
Rose half closed her eyes and smiled, sipping from her glass.
“I’d love to see that happen. Art needs to get laid. Since he got dumped by… What’s her name?”
“Amanda.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s had sex with anybody since Amanda dumped him.”
“Wasn’t that like a year or something ago?”
“Scary, huh?”
I just shook my head and kept looking down at my glass. I was catching up with him as I was going on a six month dry spell, though mine was intentional and self imposed. I didn’t feel like I needed the hang-ups and baggage of a lover.
“You heading out soon? Cause’ I think I wanna get to sleep.”
She exhaled, the smoke coming out in one long stream, and made a disappointed face.
“I don’t know.” She let her voice trail off as she lifted the cigarette to her lips again.
“I don’t really have enough cash for a taxi or a new Metro Card and I sure as shit don’t wanna walk home.”
For the first time, there was a semi-awkward silence that hung with the foggy smoke. I looked over her shoulder at the closet.
“Well, if you really don’t wanna go back I have a futon mattress in the closet. But it’s kind of lumpy.”
Her reaction was a bit quicker than I’d expected.
“That’d be great. I don’t mind about shitty beds. Remember the beds back in college?”
“Guess you can sleep on anything once you’ve slept on those bricks.”
When I reached to tap my ash in the tray on the table, just within my heavy-lidded field of view, I noticed a light smile gracing the corners of her mouth. I leaned back and downed the rest of my drink and then stood up to fetch the mattress from the top shelf of the closet. Once I rolled out the mattress and set down some sheets for her to sleep on, she stepped into the bathroom and got ready to go to sleep. I waited outside the door for my turn and when she reemerged she had her black boots and socks in hand and her black blouse and bra hanging on her arm. I tried to ignore the sexy black lace and the light flushing in her cheeks from the alcohol and because I’d startled her a bit. She smelled like my toothpaste, cigarettes, and her vanilla spray which she’d pulled from her bag before she went in.
I had my hands against the top of the sink with the water running and I was looking myself in the eye in the mirror. I repeated “just go to sleep, just go to sleep” over and over in my head as I tried not to let the alcohol make me do something I would regret in the morning. She was sexy and cool and a woman; not a little girl. She was everything I wanted at that moment, but I knew I would ruin the friendship and that was something I could not bear. I splashed my face with hot water, ran a wet hand through my hair, and swished some Listerine around in my mouth. When I walked into the room, Rose was already curled up and asleep on the floor, her purse and boots by her head, blouse folded around her bra by her feet. I smiled and went around the room turning off, first, the stereo and the other lights. I took off my shirt as I sat down on my bed and dropped it on the floor. I let my body fall back, crossed my legs, and put my hands behind my head before I fell asleep.
~~~
In the early morning I slowly rose out of sleep when I felt a tickle in my nostril and a weight against my chest. For a moment I panicked. I lifted my left hand to rub my eyes and I looked down onto the top of Rose’s small head. Both of us were still clothed and I breathed relief. I had fallen asleep belly up and she had her hand on my chest, she was just slightly curled up next to me, her body close. I swallowed hard as I felt the rise and fall of her breasts against my chest, and she slowly rose her head to meet my eyes. She blinked at me and half-smiled before putting her head back against my collarbone and reaching across my chest to bring me closer. I didn’t breathe for a moment and I pulled one hand from behind my head to put an arm around her back. Were it any other woman, by that point I would have been aggravatingly aroused; but I wasn’t. I was still looking down on her auburn head as the blue sun rose above the buildings, and I leaned my head back, sighing. It was going to be another grey day, but right then I didn’t mind. Right then I wouldn’t have minded to lay there forever.
Crash
I am SO SO sorry for posting this thing so late. My computer decided to fail on me Sunday night so I had to essentially start from scratch with this new story. I will try to drop off some paper copies at Prof. Barnstone's office tomorrow and I will bring copies for everyone in class tomorrow. Please don't crucify me for this...
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