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  THE SUE WOTT ACHE

  Despite a worldkinds telling and detailings

  and meticulous recordings:

  of symptoms, signs, and syndromes,

  of its palpitations, pustulations and abrasions,

  of its scabs, blood flows, of its impairments and impalings,

  of muscular deterioration, of neurological disintegrations,

  of its endless clottings, twitches, stoppings and failings,

  no doctor yet can calm the pain

  not even a soothing balm has been discovered

  to relieve the inflamed affections

  of a brusquely uncoupled lover.

  It was a better poem than the one he wrote me, and now it was too late to dump him—at least figuratively. On the other side of the page was that goddamn line drawing, no different from the one of me. Instead of circular eyes, hers opened like zippers. It was difficult to believe that the rock-and-roll despot I had auditioned for—such an absolute terror—could inspire this yearning. I located another poem delightfully entitled, “Fuck You Fuck!” that read:

  Go ahead—Kiss to your heart’s content!

  —it won’t make you any goddamned younger

  or any more in love.

  And I can laugh much longer

  while thinking how the both of you can’t believe

  either hasn’t or will ever kiss another

  to wilt and wither this one.

  My eyes started growing misty as Mrs. Schultz murmured, “Christ, I’m starving. You hungry, dear?”

  “Sure,” I replied politely. Remaining thin and attractive in America was a chronicle of hunger.

  She spun in reverse, turned ninety degrees, barely missing a glass cabinet, and zoomed into the kitchen like a Pakistani cabbie. I followed. She ordered me to take down a can of StarKist Tuna. I removed it from the cupboard, but confided to her that I didn’t really want tuna.

  “In my day we ate as given,” she muttered, told me to open another drawer, and instructed me to take out a box of Entenmann’s cinnamon rolls. She told me how to open the box. She told me where the right knife was. She told me which plate to put the boring pastry on—the china, not the plastic. She criticized me for cutting more than a proper square.

  “What do you want to drink?” she asked.

  “Water,” I said simply, because I didn’t feel like being instructed in making coffee.

  She asked me to bring the dish of crappy pastry into the dining room. So I sat before her and ate the week-old cinnamon rolls as she waxed on, trying to spin Primo’s death into guilt. Her life would be lonely now. Who would call her for Mother’s Day? Who would come over for Christmas? In the course of the next twenty minutes, while thinking of a way to get the hell out of there, I caught a glimpse of an old photo and saw Primo wearing a sailor outfit.

  “Holy shit,” I said, without intending to curse. “Was Primo in the navy?”

  “No, that was his father.”

  “Oh, yeah. He does look older.”

  “We met during the war,” she began. “He was so handsome. But he was not a stay-at-home type.”

  Maybe he just wasn’t the stay-with-you type, I wanted to say. “Is he still alive?”

  “I don’t know. We divorced soon after Primo was born.” She looked out the window. “You know how it is.”

  “Oh yeah,” I replied. Fathers in this day and age have a way of vanishing. “Frankly, I always wanted a daughter,” Mrs. Schultz eventually confided. “I always liked my boy, but it wasn’t easy being a single mother. It was difficult dating. If I brought home a boyfriend, Primo would have a fit. I would have to find places outside to be intimate. Primo was such a temperamental child; he had an artist’s temperament.”

  “With all the work he did,” I said, pointing toward his grim cave, “it’s a damned shame that he never made it.”

  “Yeah, well—” She looked off in the distance. “He came pretty close.”

  By the sad, faraway look in her eye, I sensed that she was done socializing. I rose, looked at my watchless wrist, and declared I had a rendezvous. Mrs. Schultz nodded, picked up Primo’s ashes, and was about to put them in a Loehmann’s shopping bag when she paused and looked at the neat, angular box containing the remains of her only child.

  “Does anyone really believe for an instant that this is all that’s really left of him?” She kissed the kraft paper that covered the box, pressing her tacky red lipstick onto it, then dropped it into a bag and handed it to me.

  I bowed down and gave the old lady a quick embrace, which was really just a shoulder clench. She smiled and told me not to be afraid to call if I needed anything. I promised her that I would call even if I didn’t need anything, which was a bold-faced lie.

  While waiting at the Brooklyn station for the Manhattan-bound train, I flipped through copies of different fashion magazines. “Are you going to buy that?” the Indian newsstand operator asked. I closed the Elle and walked fashionably away. I battled sadness on the trip home, yet when we finally reached Manhattan and the train started filling up, my mood shifted. I remembered the line drawing Primo did of Sue Wott with the soft narrow slits. Asian eyes, I had read, were adapted to the snow-blinding climate of frozen Asia during the Ice Age. This was my ice age. Primo’s line drawing of me didn’t look half so attractive as the one he did of her—the girl of his dreams and nightmares.

  If this wasn’t bad enough, for about ten minutes while stalled in the White Hall station, some fat old hippie made goo-goo eyes at me. His short arms were covered with old algae-colored tattoos, and his big beer belly made him look like a lecherous bullfrog. I placed the bag holding the cube that was Primo on my lap to conceal myself as much as possible. It didn’t stop there. When I got off the train, up to the light of day, it was as though I was on a harassment conveyor belt. First a row of street-lunching stevedores made comments as I walked up Eighth Street toward Kmart. At Cooper Union, a man walked right behind me, chugging out a series of vile anatomical comments. Perhaps lack of exercise and crappy eating habits make a fellow horny. If this male annoyance unit had a nutritional breakdown label, his fat calories would definitely have exceeded all other items.

  When I finally opened my door, the answering machine had just clicked on and was recording a message: “Good news. We’ve picked you.”

  It was the target of Primo’s affections—Sue Wott. I snatched the phone off the horn and said, “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “You don’t have to pay a percentage of the band’s operating expenses,” she explained. I could hear a kid screaming in the background.

  “Is that your child?” I asked politely.

  “Yes, but he’s not part of the deal.”

  “Who’s the father?” I asked in that interstice of levity.

  “A man. Are you Crazy and Beautiful or not?”

  “Can I think about it?” I asked, looking at myself in a hand mirror.

  “No, I need an answer right now.”

  “Now?”

  “We already booked space and have a date lined up. I would’ve called you earlier, but we had to hear from one last girl in the Mica Shits.”

  “You picked me over someone else?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Sure, but they couldn’t follow orders and you had bigger boobs, so you won out.”

  If she were male I could sue her, but because she was a brash chick I could only ask her where and when they were meeting: two tomorrow afternoon at the same studio where I had auditioned.

  “And bring your own bass this time,” she growled.

  “Two in the afternoon! How about during weekdays?”

  “We’re mainly planning to rehearse in the evenings. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hung up. I lay down and, while trying to decide whether or not to take a nap, I fell asleep.

  It was early in the evening when Joey woke me up on my machine, saying that he heard there was a great restaurant in my neighborhood, did I want to join him. I picked up. Of course I did, only
in these classy overpriced mess halls where you got to wear a nice dress and tasteful makeup and have waiters treat you like a queen, only then did I feel like I had any worth. An hour later we met outside the Gotham Diner, where he talked about the travails of his long day.

  “At the collection agency?” I asked, slicing up a segment of leek in a wonderful mustard sauce.

  “Yeah, it’s amazing. People think they can just take the money and walk.”

  “How do you collect the cash?”

  “Mainly through lawyers—we get a ruling, and then we’ll put a lien on them or grab their wage or tax refunds.”

  “It sounds depressing.”

  “It is for them. But hey, they should be thinking about that before they place the bet.”

  “What bet?”

  “I always think of the money as a bet. Life’s kind of a gamble, isn’t it?”

  “You are such a philosopher,” I commented. After dinner, dessert, aperitifs, a stroll to my apartment, a walk of the dog, and television, there was the joy of sleep.

  Late the next morning, I thought about looking for a better job. I also thought about shaving my legs and waxing my bikini line. Each seemed equally inconceivable. By one-thirty I was out the door, heading to the first band rehearsal of my life.

  I inspected Primo’s old Fender Bass. It was tattooed with odd and torn stickers. Under its neck between the last two metal frets were scratched E, A, D, G. I didn’t have an amp, so I couldn’t hear the actual sounds that twanged out. I was running late, but I grabbed a cup of coffee downstairs.

  I followed the path I took to the audition, down the street, into the old building, up the rickety elevator to the third floor. The little room was like a decompression chamber, packed with three girls and their supplies. They were playing when I showed up. After they finished their little jam, Sue said, “You’re allowed three latenesses, and then you get fined a dollar for every minute. That’s how we do things, you dig?” I didn’t respond, and she wisely didn’t push it.

  What the fuck was I doing here? I wondered as she screamed at Norma, “Are those drumsticks tuned up? Finding the rhythm from you is like getting a pulse from a heart attack victim.”

  When Marilyn started laughing at the little insult, Sue turned on her. “You came in too late and stayed too long. And by the way, we’re supposed to begin at E, go up to A, and then back to E, remember?” Sue played in E on her acoustic guitar as she sang the lyrics: “Don’t jerk off beforehand.” Then to A—“Then go limp and blame me-e-e, man …”

  Noticing me looking at her in amused horror, she asked, “Hey, new girl, I hope you brought your pick?”

  “Cool it, cupcake,” Marilyn replied.

  Sue didn’t respond. After this short, abusive break, equipment and people were squeezed to one side. A space was created to stand, and a worn-out practice amp was pointed out for me. I strapped on my bass and plugged it into an extra distortion pedal that Marilyn had that allowed me to modulate my sound.

  Sue discussed the type of music the Beautiful and the Crazy were trying to attain; some hazy point between punk and pop. We played four songs. Even though it was my first session, and I hadn’t played since college, the looseness of the band was not all my fault. Norma missed beats. Marilyn was frequently out of tune, and Sue kept forgetting her lines, which was unforgivable, considering she wrote all the damn songs.

  After an hour of instrumental torture, we stumbled and bumbled through the remaining four songs. All were faintly accusatory toward men, but the level of sarcasm and wordplay redeemed them; “Colder Than a Witches Tit” and “Poontang You” were among my two favorites. One tune, “The Ache,” was loosely based on Primo’s insulting poem to Sue. After a second hour, when two of the simpler songs had been shaped and polished into something discernible, Norma started dropping her drumsticks. Sue called a fifteen-minute break and asked her drummer if she was able to continue. Overly ambitious, Sue had rented out three hours of rehearsal time, far too much for attention-deficit-disorder-suffering East Villagers like ourselves.

  Sue gave Marilyn five dollars and told her to buy us all some coffees and a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies. I wondered where Sue got her cash, and if she was still stripping—or maybe it was from all her late fees. Before we began the second half of our rehearsal, Sue stared at my instrument. It was covered with fading and peeled decals from years gone by.

  “Holy shit,” she finally broke through the gaze of contemplation. “I recognize this.” It didn’t even occur to me that she could trace it until she said, “This is Primo’s fucking Fender!”

  “Primo?!” I said fearfully, and had this strange fear that she was going to throw me out of the band.

  “Where the fuck did you get it?” She picked it up like an old acquaintance with whom she’d had a bad falling-out.

  “He sold it to me,” I replied.

  “You know him?”

  “Someone introduced us. He was trying to get some money quickly.” I knew she’d recognize this as Primo’s style.

  “The bastard!”

  I considered telling her about his demise—this was my opportunity to come clean—but in that instant I didn’t want to jeopardize my band standing, so I innocently asked, “Did you know him?”

  “Aside from being my husband through most of the eighties, he screwed two of my friends as well as my sister, who I still don’t speak to.” She didn’t mention child abandonment or nonpayment of child support, which comforted me.

  “Did you love him?” No sooner had I asked this than I regretted it.

  “You know what love is,” she embarked as she stepped into my personal space, “Love is a contract, and he never fulfilled his part of it.”

  I was dying to ask her if Primo was the father of her Amerasian kid, but she clapped her hands loudly and announced that she had to talk to everyone. She filled me in on their upcoming events. In two weeks we were scheduled to play at Mercury Lounge, then a few days after that we were going to have a showcase performance with two other girl bands, including Emily’s band, Crapped Out Cowgirls, and Purple Hooded Yogurt Squirter.

  “Don’t you think we should practice more before going out?” I asked.

  “We’re going to rehearse about a half dozen times before the Mercury show,” she explained. Tomorrow we’d meet again.

  Norma the geriatric punkster lived on Second and Seventh, so we tiredly walked east together. Sue and Marilyn, the human pincushion, headed north. Once home I checked my messages. Alphonso, the ruffian I had met in the strip joint, asked for a rematch. I was too tired to think about it.

  chapter 8

  My most wonderful and awful moment with Primo were one and the same. For my twenty-ninth birthday, only about four months ago, he took me out for one of the finest dinners I had ever masticated. It was at the Royalton in Midtown. I actually purchased a dress for the occasion. He wore a nice suit. Where he got it and what became of it afterward, I could only wonder. Knowing that I’m a closet carnivore, he ordered the most expensive cut of meat on the menu, something I never could have done without guilt.

  “You have to remember this day,” he said with a sneaky smile.

  “I thought thirty was the big birthday,” I said.

  “It’s really twenty-nine,” he corrected.

  “Why?”

  “Twenty-nine celebrates the last of your twenties. Thirty is to celebrate the decade to come.”

  While we ate, a beautiful, heavy rain fell like a string of pearls from the heavens. Afterward we walked all the way back home down Fifth Avenue along those dark, washed, and empty streets and we only saw about two people. It was as if everyone had left the city; we were virtually alone in New York that night.

  When we finally got to the front door of my apartment, he handed me a small velvet-lined box.

  “What the hell’s this?” I said. What I really meant to say was, Who are you? Where is Primo?

  “It’s a wedding ring,” he said, beaming. “An expensive one
, too.” I later had it appraised at six hundred dollars, which for him was a moderate fortune.

  “So when are we getting married?” I kidded, knowing there must be a catch.

  “We just did,” he explained, as we headed through the grimy hallway to the apartment door.

  “Just did what?”

  “No one stays married nowadays.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m celebrating our time together. We are whatever we are. That ring commemorates these last few months together. If we last another fifty years, or break up in the next ten minutes, that ring celebrates it.”

  When we got inside, scented candles, expensive wine, exotic incense, intense kissing, and then better-than-average lovemaking followed. The ensuing sleep was like falling backward down a clean and bottomless elevator shaft.

  Looking back at it, the whole thing, every detail, was an incredible setup. He had planned almost every move. The way a clever serial murderer carefully plots each crime, Primo had collected and stashed away his weapons of seduction. By the next morning, however, the dream was over. The prince was his old froggy self. He never did anything even remotely romantic again. I don’t know how many failed relationships taught him how to play all the strings of that one orchestrated night, but it worked. It was the best evening in our relationship, or for that matter any relationship I ever endured. It was a diamond solitaire of an evening. I don’t wear jewelry, so I put the ring he gave me in a special place. Initially I thought of it as a keepsake, but now it’s a warning. That wonderful evening was nothing but a terrific con. I put up with relentless sloth and selfishness all in hope of just another perfect night like that—an evening that would never come.

  That was why I had to ask the medical examiner if it was possible that Primo secretly knew in advance he was dying. If the answer was yes, it would have been the single cruelest act any man ever perpetrated on me. But since his death was unplanned, Primo was only another typical male who for some reason gave me one great evening and then left.

  The more I thought about Primo, the more I could imagine of his yellowing past: he was nothing more than one of many skinny, shabby teens in those multipocketed green army jackets you’d see in the news footage marching in antiwar rallies in the late sixties. Or one of the nameless, faceless fans who’d crowd into the old Fillmore East and Academy of Music. Or getting beer drunk in Max’s Kansas City in the early seventies, maybe even putting on bells and plats, blow-drying his hair for that sweaty bend in the late seventies and early eighties when cocaine discos were puke-chic. I could see him pressed along the velvet ropes of Studio 54, or the Peppermint Lounge or the Mudd Club, but rarely being allowed in. Just a living Xerox, a piece of human wallpaper for decor in a flashback.