Homesick for Another World(59)
“Psss,” she said, and looked away finally. She poured two more shots. We drank. Wordlessly, we mended our rapport. Then she offered me another cigarette and I lit the wrong end. That did it. “You waste,” she said and clucked her tongue. She put the bottle away. When I took out my wallet, she just waved her big fat hand. “It’s nothing,” she said. In perhaps my first genuine expression of gratitude, I leaned over the bar and tried to kiss her cheek. She moved out of the way and laughed at me again, this time with great satisfaction, like a rare, wondrous beauty, arrogant and magical. She pointed to the door.
Later that night, leaning against the crumbling, mildewed tile of the shower stall back home, I looked down at myself. I was beautiful, I thought. Legions of curious fingers should be reaching out to touch me. My arms were thick and strong. A spurt of wiry black hair rose from my wrist, trembling in the warm spray like a delicate morning tendril in the dew. There I was, spectacular and alive, and the whole world was missing it. Britt Wendt was missing it most of all. I thought I heard someone call my name, some sweet angel descending from heaven just to appreciate me—I was that great. But of course, when I stumbled out into the dark hall, there was nobody. No one in that flophouse even knew my name. The only faces I could ever hope to recognize were of the lovers on the other side of the gypsum. I’d seen them entering their room once on my way back from the toilets. Where were they now? I wondered. Dancing in the fucking moonlight? I stumbled back to my room, lay on my bed, checked my e-mail, and, finding nothing, cried a little with loneliness, and then a little more with hope. I fell asleep naked in front of my space heater.
? ? ?
“what are dimensions”
All lowercase, no punctuation. These were the words Britt Wendt had e-mailed back to me on December 26, seven minutes past midnight. I read them in the early dawn, my eyes still crossed with slivovitz, but the meaning was clear: she was interested. I rubbed my eyes, read her e-mail again, praised Jesus, then ran to the toilet and vomited with joy.
By noon I was on a Chinatown bus to Rhode Island. My message to the anonymous Craigslist-generated e-mail address had resulted in a tense and flurried correspondence with one “K Mendez” who would happily meet me at the Providence bus station to exchange the ottoman in question for fifty dollars cash, a sum more than three times the original amount listed. “There are other interested parties,” he’d threatened. My e-mail at the crack of dawn, “IS THE OTTOMAN STILL FOR SALE???????!!!!” might have come across as a bit desperate. I had to pay him what he wanted. After spending twenty dollars on my round-trip bus ticket, I’d have only five dollars and change through the New Year. I’d never been that broke before. I’d have to live off ramen, give up a few days of cappuccinos, but it was worth it. “What are the dimensions?” I’d e-mailed K Mendez. He answered that it was about a foot high and weighed around twenty pounds. “I’ll take it!” I replied. I figured I could go to Providence, buy the ottoman, turn around, get on the next bus home, and e-mail Britt Wendt back by nine. I closed my eyes as the bus veered out of town. I would have no book, no earphones, nothing to distract me from my thoughts and thirst and hunger and headache for three hours and seven minutes. I could live on cold, potty-scented air for as long as it took, I told myself. Soon, Britt Wendt would be safe in my arms forever.
Halfway to Providence, the bus stopped at a McDonald’s outside New Haven. It had been more than a decade since I’d set foot in that town. In the bathroom, I studied myself in the mirror. If my twenty-two-year-old self could see me now, I wondered, what would he think? What would he say? I wore my double-breasted cashmere peacoat from Junetree, a two-ply cashmere turtleneck from Boxtrot, a vintage Fendi belt, my usual black jeans, my Amberline boots, the hat from Japan, my Yasir Arafat scarf, the rabbit fur–lined gloves. “You look like a tool” is what I imagined Nick at twenty-two would say. “But my hair,” I’d protest. “Would a tool have Jesus hair?” I debated back and forth at the urinal. My piss smelled like toxic waste. “Yes,” Nick said in the mirror on the way out. I imagined what I must have looked like to the woman at Iga the night before. She must have thought I was one of those rich jerks ruining the neighborhood.
I got back on the bus.
? ? ?
In Providence, I waited, paced, and fumed, and when K Mendez turned up at the bus station thirty-six minutes late in a taxi, I was ready to crumble. The kid appeared to be in his early twenties, tall and thin, wearing baggy jeans, a Thrasher T-shirt, and an unzipped ski jacket with a fake fur–lined hood. He barely looked at me as he set the ottoman down and straddled it between his Vans. I worried that the upholstery would get stained from the dirty, salted layer of slush on the ground, but I was too stunned by his pluck and swagger to air that concern. I held out his money. He turned away and spit and lit a cigarette and told me, in a passionless monotone, “It’s two hundred bucks now. Plus the cost of the taxi.”
“That’s insane,” I argued. “I have fifty-five bucks. And a fifteen-dollar Burger King gift card. It’s all I’ve got.”
“Fuck Burger King,” he answered. Without another word, he picked up the ottoman and headed back to the taxi stand in front of the bus station.
“Wait!” I cried out, shuffling after him. He was a fool, a punk, privileged and greedy, but he had what I wanted. “I’ll give you this!” I said, pulling the scarf off my neck as an offering. K Mendez paused and turned back to face me. His cheeks were riddled with soft, red acne scars. His teeth were like fangs. His eyes, indecipherable. He was probably selling his furniture for drugs. What else?