The Fuck-Up

“Good,” he replied, and suddenly rising to his feet he looked across the large dining area and yelled to the distant waiter, “Check!”

“Come on,” Marty said to me as he put his own coat on, “Sergei has an important appointment.”

The waiter was too slow, so Sergei dropped two twenties on the table to cover the appetizers and drinks.

Outside, Sergei vigorously walked to a Mercedes parked on Great Jones. Marty dashed ahead, and opened the door for the maestro. Grabbing the Unique shopping bag from my hand, Marty tossed it into the trunk and slammed the hood. Apparently Sergei was going to some fundraising gala at a new ritzy restaurant. It was crass to travel with any less than a party of three, so even though he and I had little else to say, Sergei desired my company. As Marty drove up Lafayette, Sergei explained that he was to meet a great star of record and music video. He mentioned a name that I didn’t know. She had topped all the charts effortlessly, and now the only other place for her to go was motion pictures.

Lafayette turned into Fourth Avenue, and Fourth turned into Park Avenue South, and then into Park Avenue, dipping down into a sunken tu

Video technicians were racing about, each filming his own excerpt. The bar was open so I downed a couple and just stared around. Under a large poster of a swollen-bellied African child, I believe I spotted Cindy Lauper sipping with Lionel Richie. Suddenly there was a stir in the crowd. Was it Michael Jackson? Mick Jagger? I heard someone mumble it was Bruce Springsteen. This was his first public appearance since his first marriage. Marty excused himself. He wanted to have a look at the Boss. I listened to clumps of people talking in small groups. They were talking “labels,” and other studio jargon that eluded me.

I spotted Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sexologist, all alone. Getting a glass of white wine, I started walking over to her. She looked at me with anticipation, but suddenly Marty grabbed my arm.

“Come on, we were about to leave without you.”

“Perhaps we’ll meet at some other benefit,” I said to the sex doctor.

“Perhaps,” she replied with that accent, and her entire face smiled.

Outside Sergei was petulantly pounding his fist on the roof of the Mercedes.

“What,” I asked stupidly, “didn’t you find your next star?”

“I wouldn’t let her be a mutilated extra in a mass murder scene!” Marty quickly ushered Ternevsky into the back seat of the car. Dashing back out Marty handed me a set of keys and told me my new address. “You can move in tonight after ten. I’ll pick up the monthly rent at the theater.”

With that he jumped into the driver’s seat, made a wild U-turn, and zoomed off down Fifty-seventh Street. it was then that I remembered that I had left my Unique bag, containing my overcoat and old clothes, in the trunk. Like Cinderella after midnight, my punk charm suddenly converted to embarrassment and self-disgust. Additionally it was three o’clock. I was supposed to try to finagle a date out of Gle

EIGHT

Between Broadway and the Bowery along Astor Place, street vendors lined the south side of the street spreading out anything that could be sold. The sellers weren’t franchised or affiliated with anything other than the garbage they’d collected or robbed, but occasionally they’d come across an item of worth or curiosity. I was able to buy a shirt and a pair of pants. I tried trading away articles of my punk clothes, but no one would take them. One vendor whom I had come to know, named Flowers, offered me a good deal on a leather waist jacket, so I bought it. Passing down Waverly Place, I noticed that there was no line in front of the Astor Place Hair Cutters. It was an off-peak hour. I quickly located one of the old Italian barbers in the fray and asked him to give me an old-style hair cut.

“The kind I’d give my kid, ya mean,” he muttered, as he tried to salvage something. After ten minutes, my second haircut of the day was done. My hair was very short.

By four o’clock I was on a corner phone asking a secretary if I could speak to Gle

“I’m sorry,” the secretary returned to life, “Miss Roberts is presently indisposed. If you’d like to leave your name and number she’ll try to get back to you.”

That meant rejection; I was about to hang up wordlessly but I suddenly heard Gle

Erica hung up and I asked Gle

In response I heard strange whiny sounds, and gradually I realized that Gle

“You should go home. Do you have a friend?”

“He cheated on me,” she replied, in complete control.

“You shouldn’t be at work now.”

“I have more appointments,” she replied.

“So he didn’t really mean anything to you?” I asked. She couldn’t respond. I heard her crying, and thought about the fact that someone whom I really didn’t know was crying on the phone to me.

“Do you really think you’re in a condition for business?”

“No, but frankly I’m afraid of an empty house.” 1 offered to join her. She then gave me her address and hung up. She lived in a brownstone, with ivy up the facade, on a quiet tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights. Wordlessly she opened the door, still wearing her overcoat. She led me through the antique-filled house into an elegant living room. I sat in an armchair. She silently sat on a sofa across from me holding a glass of Chablis and staring intensely at nothing.

“How’re you feeling?” I finally said after about five minutes.

“Fine,” she replied softly, but added, “Lets not talk.”

Which comes first, the moods or the thoughts? I focused on her lips, which looked hard and thin, but as I watched them they seemed to bloom and become increasingly more delicate. The slight gloss of her eyes seemed to increase. Devastation became her. We were in very different moods. Finally I arose and quietly sat down next to her on the sofa. First, conspicuously not touching. Gently I brought my fingers up, stroking along her collar.

“Don’t do that,” she replied tensely. “I don’t feel right, now. I just want to get over this.”

“He sounds like a real bastard.”