Last Bender

At home Joseph, Lou and Deb and Jayda were watching Straw Dogs and drinking frozen strawberry margaritas. Periodically there was a loud cracking of ice followed by a whine. Every time a gun went off they went, “Aw!!” and laughed. Joseph called out my name, waved with his cigarette and smiled. His hair was a little patch of bootblack. “Ooo Oooo! Alex, you have to sit down and watch this!”

“Shut up!”

“Yeah shshsh.”

He whispered loudly, “It’s Peckinpah. He’s like the father of bloody movies. Oh, oh, I mean, foundational.”

“Shut the fuck up, Joseph.”

“You shut the fuck up, I’m talking.” He reached out and pinched Lou.

“Good night,” I said.

“Aw!!”

Lydia was passed out on the floor with her boots on. Seated next to her was a young woman with short black hair and glasses like a VW. She said, “Hi.”

“Are you staying here too?” I closed my nose so as not to inhale the pungent breath of Lydia’s nest.

She looked at Lydia critically and said, “Yeah. I guess.”

“Well all right then,” I said, and walked past her and through the door to our room. It was a strange door. The ceilings were twenty feet high and the wall was a narrow section that bumped out of the back wall of the loft. It felt both cramped and isolated, and yet entering the door I was always aware of a vast expanse of white space. To enter the door was to expand and contract simultaneously. There was no net change despite a high degree of distortion and discomfort. One became the knot of nonexistence

I took off my clothes and kicked them into the corner, brushed my teeth and climbed wearily into the bed, over Sally, who slept on the edge facing outward, squeezing in between her and the wall. She slept curled up and her ass stuck halfway out across the bed. I curled up behind her and asked, “Are you awake?”

“Yes. How was it?”

I snuggled up to her and put my face in her hair. “Roy’s married.”

“Oh my god, Roy’s married.”

“He met her on an airplane. They got married in Vegas.”

She rolled over on to her back. “That only happens on Love American Style.”

I smiled. The beeswax candle on the shelf was low and starting to gutter. “What happened to Karen Valentine.”

She rolled over to face me. Her hair stood out in tiny peaks. I could feel the heat of her body. “I got a lot done today,” she said. “But there’s something. It just isn’t coming out right. I keep reading and reading, trying to back everything up and now I don’t even have any idea of what I’m trying to say. I feel like this total, fraud. You know? Like, I am fully capable of convincing them that I can do this, but totally unable to do it. It’s almost like Sylvio and Christopher are trying to sabotage me. I don’t know.”

“You’ll work it out.”

She kissed me and asked, “So, did you get any reading done? When did you see Roy.”

“When I got home Roy was sitting at the table, reading a paper and watching that woman walk naked across the airshaft. It went on after that. He took me up on an airplane and we buzzed my father’s house, until he came out and cursed us.”

She laughed. “Where did you get a plane?”

“Westchester Airport. And that’s not it. He bought a place in Tribeca, on Walker Street. We went to his place to meet his wife, Dawn, and admire the view.”

“Admire the view with Dawn. Was dawn in the view you admired?”

“I didn’t mention the greaser car either. ‘66 Mustang convertible. Robin’s egg blue. Dawn was cool. He dragged me to some Larry River’s party at One Fifth, and then dinner at this place called Odeon down on West Broadway.”

“I read about that place in New York Magazine.”

“Where do you read New York?”

“At my dentist and my therapist.”

“That’s pretty good for a waiting room. My dentist is in the Chrysler building. He doesn’t have shit in his waiting room. His mother died and they cleaned all the catalogs and magazines out of her apartment and now they cycle them through the waiting room. He’s got Modern Maturities from 1971, and Highlights from the sixties.

“Where was I? Oh yeah. So we stayed there till closing, don’t ask me how, they barely ate a thing. Then Roy insinuated himself into this little claque of people working there and we went to Lucky Strike. I stayed for one drink. That place gave me a headache. It was so brightly lit. People with acne wouldn’t go there. What’s a bar without dark festering corners? I left and I think they were headed off to Berlin. I suppose you know what that is too.”

“Of course. But what I don’t know is, what’s a greaser and what’s a mustang.”

“A Mustang is a kind of cheap sports car. And a greaser is like a fifties guy. The Fonze is a greaser. Rocky’s a greaser. It comes from the hair, the grease in the hair, and the thing about working on cars, like grease monkeys? Grease? The play, Grease?”

“So that’s what that was? We put it on at this summer camp I went to in the Catskills. Sloatsburg?”

“What the fuck?”

She laughed. “That’s what my father said when he got the stuff in the mail. Sloatsburg! What the fuck? It’s a town near Bear Mountain. It’s scary. There are no dogs there. I think they ate them all. You get off the bus from the city, and the clapboards are peeling, and it looks abandoned and dark. Then they pick you up in this little bus they have and you ride up to the camp which was really a camp for Jewish hippy nymphomaniacs. But I mean, seriously belated hippies. Very mannerist. And their promiscuity totally uninspired. The natural result of careful study.”

“So you didn’t have greasers or greaser cars at your high school?”

“Not at Dalton, no! How fast does a Mustang go?”

“I prayed towards the end. He had a radar detector, so there was no pressure of law upon him, not that that would have mattered much. At one point I believe he said he was doing 95 on 95. It was hard to hear, with the top down, but I am sure he was gloating. His mood was one of gloat throughout.”

“Gloating into the gloaming with Dawn.” The candle flickered and went out. The dark for a moment was absolute. “I wish I could go that fast,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Just as I settled out I could feel her eyes pop open. “I’m afraid of how much I love you,” she said.

I groaned out of sleep. “Why should you be afraid?”

“Because of everything. What if I lose you, what then? If I don’t have you, I don’t lose you. And then, there’s the problem of the truth, or of delusion. It is possible we don’t actually love each other, or that all of loves labours are lost. All we do is chase after ourselves in each other, and chase each other in our dreams.”

“Keats. When I have doubts–”

“Fears. When I have fears that I may cease to be/Before my pen has glean’d my teaming brain.”

“Then on the shore/Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.”

*******************

I said to Dorothy, “I know where we met now. It was at Odeon. You were waiting for your friend Hong, with that woman Helen.”

“Ohhhh, yeah! That’s it,” she laughed and put her head on her hand and her hair fell over it and almost touched the counter. “Your brother is out of his mind. You two are so different.”

“I had to bail.”

“We had a lot of fun, but it was scary for a bit there when Roy wouldn’t get off of Vietnam. And Hong may not speak much English, but he’s been in Canada for five years and understands a lot more than you would guess. But I mean now of course they live here. What a relief.” She stood and headed into the back. I lined up metal pitchers steaming from the dishwasher and filled them with milk and half and half. Dean walked in.

Dean, who did what I did at Dojo, and had been doing it longer, was there to give me some pointers. He had witnessed a few of my more spectacular fiascos behind the counter the first week. Dorothy was a tolerant boss I suppose, but it really was that she was just glad it wasn’t her. And she couldn’t fire me, she wasn’t that kind of boss. She just ran the place for the owners, who also had a restaurant downtown on Tompkins Square. One night after a particularly awful shift I was having dinner at the counter at Dojo’s with Tammy and Matthew. Matthew had become obsessed with the orange dressing and had to eat a chicken cutlet sandwich every day. Now that I was in the business I couldn’t help but notice that Dean’s cappuccinos had a nice billow of foam to dust with cinnamon. And his espressos always had a thick crema. Mine did not.

“Alex,” Dean said, slouching a little, and pushing the hair off his cheek and behind his ear. He was in tan corduroys and loafers without socks, and a leather jacket. His face was red and his glasses were fogged up. “Is today cool? I was up here anyway to have coffee with Powell.”

I stood and said, “No, it’s fine, let’s go. How is Powell?”

“Oh, don’t think I don’t know you hate her.”

“Hate’s too strong a word. Contempt. There’s an unfortunate difference.”

We were two men who don’t go in for manly things doing a thing that is manly, that is, we were inspecting a recalcitrant machine; and one man was about to initiate the other into its mysteries. Dean had tanned this hide to his uses and it was part of the ritual that we first examine the equipment in general before proceeding to the details of milk steaming.

“You have the same one I do. I’m sure whatever works on mine will work on yours.”

“As it is in all things,” I said.

“The first part is, this thing here?” He held the steamer stem by the tip and twisted it back and forth, gently. “Now, this thing is filthy. See this white film on it? You’re letting your milk deposits build up, and it’s disgusting. You’ve got to wipe it down with a hot rag after you use it, every time. And you have to boil a pitcher of water with it a couple of times a shift. You want to pull it out, like this, and then turn the knob here and let the cold water out first?” He turned the knob and it squirted before issuing a cloud of steam. “So where’s your milk and pitcher and stuff?” I busied myself getting them. “Well if it’s contempt and not hatred,” he said, “I’m sure you don’t care that Antonia and Powell are breaking up.”

“Really? Is she upset?”

“They haven’t had sex in two years.”

All I could think was that two years ago I hadn’t ever had sex. That’s like, twenty-one years or something. Two years couldn’t be too long. But why would they continue to share a bed? “Why are they still together? It hardly seems worth it without the sex.”

“Oh my god, Alex.” He took the pitcher from me smiling wickedly. “Milk,” he said, like a surgeon requesting an instrument. I handed him a half-gallon carton, which he set down so he could examine the pitcher. “You’re going to have to keep this clean too for it to work right. Always use fresh cold milk. It doesn’t steam right twice and it doesn’t steam right if it’s already hot. You fill it up at least a third of the way, but no more than half? You don’t want to do too much and you don’t want to do too little. It’s got to be, you know, just right. So then you spit this thing,” (it shot out its stream of water) “and just put the tip down into it and start to steam the milk. You want to get it hot but you don’t want to boil it…and then draw it up like this–” It swelled up the sides of the pitcher as he drew the foam up off the surface of the milk. He shut it down and showed me the pitcher of hot milk suffused with a bloom of foam. “You just get it going and draw it up.” He looked around at the rest of the layout. “Where do they line up, at the register? Or at the counter?”

“Wherever.”

“Tell your manager to manage the crowd. You know, make a line for ordering, and another one to pay your check. If it’s really busy, the manager should come out and work the register, so you can make the drink orders. And you have to line your orders up, start doing two, three things at once. Keep the espresso machine clean. Always use fresh cold milk and don’t boil it. Tamp the grounds. That’s it.” He pulled out the filter handle and felt around the dispersion screen the water goes through. “Yeah, the grounds are imbedded in the holes. You’re not getting much flow. You gotta use that thing there.” He pointed to a blind filter on the counter. He cleaned it while he talked, letting the steam back up and then slowly opening the handle to release the pressure. “It doesn’t have any holes in it. It forces the water up into the screen and cleans it out. Tamp down the grounds when you load, but not too hard. And then keep an eye on it while it runs.” It dribbled and then ran into a demitasse. The espresso had a thick crema on top. “Same with a double.” He whacked the grounds out into the knock box, rinsed the filter and picked up the double spout, loaded it and made two more. He steamed another pitcher of milk and poured some in a glass. He poured the coffee in and then layered it with foam and sprinkled cinnamon on top. It took a couple of seconds maybe. “When it gets busy, just keep doing everything faster. But don’t freak out. If you go too fast at first, you’ll fuck up, and then you have to deal with that.”

I whacked the grounds out of the double and rinsed the filter. Then I pulled some coffee into it, tamped it down and twisted it into place. I was just getting agile at loading and unloading the handle so that the gaskets aligned and sealed with ease. We watched it flow and spurt into the two demitasses. As he had done I turned it off just as the last of the crema was coming out.

“You got it. Mind if I have one?”

“On the house. You want a pastry?”

“That chocolate brioche looks kind of intense.”

I walked over to the case and took two out with wax paper. He munched on one avidly and nearly finished it and the cappuccino before he spoke again. “Are you reading it too?” he asked, pointing his nose at The New Yorker lying open on the counter. “Jonathan Schell?”

“Dorothy and me both.”

“It freaked me out too much. I didn’t sleep so I didn’t read part two or three.”

Sally came in wearing a black cashmere overcoat, and a long, fuzzy, multicolored scarf which was wound around her neck and, out on the street, coiled about her head like a Bedouin. She had on thick mountaineering mittens and carried a backpack full of books. We kissed and then the rush began. This time I was much smoother, more confident for having talked to Dean.

Now in the morning, or at noon, Sally and I took a left out the door together and rode the express to 96th street. Then we hoofed it to 112th, where I got off and she kept going. Her scholarly desperation was acute, but not nearly so acute as Lydia’s decline. Lydia was now either in a stupor, or on the couch glaring at the TV, drinking cans of coke. The empties, some of them crushed, covered the coffee table. She would start out sitting with her feet up on the table covered in crushed empties and then slowly through the evening sink till she was lying propped up on pillows, with an ashtray on her stomach. Her hair had grown out and was several mismatched colors. Her lips were slack and her skin was thick and grey. She didn’t bathe anymore and had a wet, hacking cough and hemorrhages. When she spoke it was in a frayed, whiney voice.

Nobody seemed particularly concerned. It’s not like we didn’t notice, we just took it for granted. Lydia had slidden almost imperceptibly into this state of sleeping in her boots, surrounded by clothes, half-eaten, weeks-old to-go cartons and empty bottles. The air around her bed was dense with fetid glandulations and the alien odor of her friends, cigarette smoke, patchouli oil and dirty laundry. Her mood was condignly vituperative, unless she was in need, in which case she became seductive, beguiling or pathetic, as indicated.

One morning in the early spring she awoke in a downright chipper mood. Actually, for several weeks there had been some improvement to her condition, which we attributed to the presence of her on-again, off-again girlfriend, Maureen, an NYU film student. Maureen appeared to be living with us.

The household liked Maureen. She got along with the Lacan folks, and with Joseph and his friends. Even Sally and I liked Maureen. The person none of us could stand was Lydia. People were disgusted by her. They even started to laugh when she left the room. One night at around 3 in the morning, she got up off the couch and Lou refused to sit in the spot. He sniffed the pillows and made a face. He and Joseph both said, “Ew!” and laughed so hard they couldn’t breathe.

Lydia rumbled back in from the kitchen, trailing smoke behind her. “Are you laughing at me? Ech. Little babies with little babie dickie poos.” She sat down and changed the channel. “There’s nothing good on anymore. 26 fucking channels.” She hit the channel button every two seconds for five minutes.

So when Lydia actually began to leave the apartment, and occasionally bathe and change her clothes, when she was sufficiently defended to withstand the needled water and the cold, stiff cloth of a shower, we liked Maureen even more.

Lydia shaded her eyes with her hands and opened the paper screens, looking down on the street. “Look at that guy trying to drive up on the sidewalk!” she laughed and clapped her hands. “Arse, hole.”

I was giving Batsard’s Principles of Bibliographical Description another shot: ‘(h) New impressions from standing type: It may be taken as a general rule that insufficient type will be left standing by accident to cause any doubt whether a book printed from a mixture of reset formes and standing type is an edition or an issue.’ To whom is it given to know suche stuff?

I asked them if they wanted coffee. “Yes I do, Al-ex. C’mon Mo.” Only Lydia got to call her Mo.

I poured them coffee from the machine. “What calls forth ye young ladies from your raptures of sleep so early in the morn?”

“The Lawk,” Lydia said. “You didn’t know about Lawks, did you. Like the Meadow Lawk.”

“Oh, like a nightingale kind of lark, a skylark.”

“Not a fucking Buick, I don’t mean. What calls us forth is I got a sick friend in the hospital with pneumonia. I gotta go cheer him up. We danced together for years. He’s such a little fag about things.”

Maureen sipped her coffee and blinked. “Do you have to say faggot all the time?” she asked.

“I said ‘fag’, you faggot. And you got a better word for it you fucking dyke? Lezzie bitch faggot cunt asshole.” She smiled and laughed. “How long a sentence do you think you could say with only bad words in it? They make those books in libraries with word lists. You could just read that. But the fun would be seeing how many you actually know. The other night Lou said to me, ‘There I was staring at her beef-curtains.’”

“Her what?” I asked.

“I know. I thought I’d heard everything. But beef curtains! Ew! Those fucking Englishmen only like assholes, pussy freaks them out.”

Maureen looked at me and said, without inflection, “The coffee’s always good when you make it.”

“That’s because he’s a fucking anus! He measures it with a spoon, haven’t you ever watched? It’s a sociopathic thing. Ask your girlfriend what it’s called, Alex. It’s retentive.”

Sally came in in her bathrobe. She hadn’t shaved her legs in months. They were covered in hair. It was blond, but it was coarse and long. I kept praying she would shave them. “Oh hell, goddamn it all. Today’s Merchant. I’m going to be patrolling liminal spaces and traducing, transferring, traversing and transgressing all day long. The codes are in dire danger. The edifice will collapse. Gentlemen, the revolution is upon us.”

“That ain’t revolution. That’s just what people do. Isn’t it just like what I was saying to Mo the other day?” She looked at Mo. “It is isn’t it? We gotta transgress us some sublimanal spaces, maaan.” Lydia could make the most ordinary words sound vulgar. She could make your ideas taste like they had died in your mouth.