You can lose your mind right in front of us.
She is a train wreck. We gape at her. We are cruel, so cruel. Why don’t we save her?
Flashes of mirrored windows. She can’t escape herself. Her face frantic, pink, smudged.
For wherever you go, I will go…
Can you please spare 40p?
40p man is back. He has returned.
The outside world is chaotic and cruel.
Waiting at the crosswalk, she thinks, what’s that thing that keeps drivers slowly filling with rage throbbing with impatience from lifting the brake and plowing down a pedestrian? What keeps them from swallowing that brief impulse of glee, like stomping on a robin skittering past on the sidewalk?
(I want to stomp on their fragile stalks not yet formed, those spiky buds creeping up through moist dirt.)
The mall next to Liverpool is made of green glass like the bottom of a pool flooded with light. It hurts her eyes.
Today she doesn’t want to live in her skin.
She neededwantedneeded to peel it off, peel it off.
She begins to look for work on the high streets. The constant refrain: Do you have a CV? Just leave your CV. Your CV, your CV. Your proof of identity. She is having an identity crisis. Who am I? (Is that me?) Who do I want to become? She journeys invisible through fog.
She has no memory of herself. Surrounded by the gray, the gray, the gray. She passes out herself laid flat on a piece of paper, mumbling thanks to willing hands.
A realization—everyone in central London is a tourist. You can tell by the uncertainty in their eyes. But Ruth is used to being a tourist. Being a girl is like always being a tourist, always conscious of yourself, always seeing yourself as if from the outside.
She waits and waits for the call, any call, and goes home at dark, following the exodus of the properly employed. Tottenham Court Road. Holborn. Change here for the Piccadilly.
Doors closing. Mind the gap.
Chancery Lane. St. Paul’s. Bank. Liverpool.
She sits at Soho Square, watching the pigeons. The fragile yellow pom-poms from the trees fall on her coat, in her hair. Pigeon-beasts who look dyed in ink dart about skeptically. The red warty prong of pigeon toes. Amber glass dots for eyes. Metallic purple and green necklaces. There is a king pigeon with white tuft and turkey chin, cooing. They rapidly disperse at the faintest sign of crumb or wrapper, like a massive breeze through the trees. The weakest of the pack fly back disappointed. A little girl dives through the pigeons. A Godzilla baby.
An Asian couple think they’re playing heroics by emptying out the contents of their plastic bag. The pigeons form a desperate orgy, jumping onto each other, while those on the fringe dart about excluded from the frenzy.
Ruth listens to construction workers talk swollenly in foreign tongues. The little girl chases after a freak white bird, an albino pigeon.
In the center of the square a statue with a pecked-out face. Charles, says the plaque. It is Charles, in sandstone armory, Charles in the age of powdered wigs of curling hair. A dappled pigeon sits on his head like a crown. Hand tossed on waist, the other wrist aristocratically positioned. Face pecked away.
The desperate monsters purr. It is once again feeding time. A man on the bench across from her in the circle throws some bread from an uneaten baguette. Word has gotten out and almost instantly a flock lands in front of their crumb king, hoping, praying, for some bread. A fruitless exodus. The amount tossed only satisfies a few pecks. The rest mill about on the checkerboard concrete stupidly. They are still setting up camp, hoping for the same benevolent gesture. A few loners strike out until they fly over Ruth’s head, spotting a messy crisp-eater. Then again, and again. They are exhausting. A yellow pom-pom sticks to her stockings.
She hears the lulling tambourine approach. Four Hare Krishnas appear, meandering hopefully through the park. The thromp, thromp of the drum. Gym shoes. Flowing melon-colored saris. Heads wrapped in scarves. Dirt-colored hooded sweatshirts. One just in jeans and Nikes. They beat methodically their orange bongo and bells. They sing in unison their hopeful tune, palms upturned.
They are a constant presence in the square, her Hare Krishnas, her saviors, scaring the pigeons away.
She heads up Tottenham Court Road to look for movie times. She sees films on her day off, though every day is now a day off. She goes to the movies often, to fill in the space of the day, although she knows she needs to conserve her dwindling pile of pounds. This is her other sacred space. The calm privacy of the movie theater, surrounded by shadowy strangers. It is like Liberty.
She pushes into a rush-hour train home, stuck between the armpits of businessmen, briefcases, beery breath. Gossiping about a colleague. She tries to follow:
He slagged him off.
He’s an alright sort.
Tottenham Court Road. Holborn. Change here for the Piccadilly.
Chancery Lane. St. Paul’s. Bank. Liverpool.
Take me out tonight
Take me anywhere, I don’t care
I don’t care, I don’t care
And in the darkened underpass
I thought oh god, my chance has come at last
(
but then a strange fear gripped me and I
just couldn’t ask
).
— The Smiths
Agnes wants Ruth to go with her to a party near Old Street. It is a dress-up party. The theme is circus. Agnes loves to play dress up. Last costume party they were Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, Deneuve’s real-life sister from
The Young Girls of Rochefort
. Ruth was the Deneuvian blonde, Agnes was the redhead who gets Gene Kelly, who died in a car crash in real life.
Today Agnes dresses up like an old-fashioned tightrope walker, like out of Toulouse-Lautrec. She wears a top hat over her orange ringlets and a red leotard over webbed red tights. Red boots, of course. Her leotard is so tight her breasts bulge out and her crotch looks painted on, like an unsexed doll. Completing the outfit is her cigarette holder and black gloves up to her elbows. She has spent a week planning her outfit. Ruth doesn’t know what to wear so Agnes lets her borrow her plastic sunglasses in the shape of stars and she wears one of Agnes’ dresses with one of her feather boas wrapped around her neck. That is her costume. She is in disguise. She is Agnes for the night.
Walking outside past the ogle of men standing outside the strip club across from the gas station, past the tree like an armless woman howling in pain, past the big stone church.
The party is at a large warehouse. In the back Agnes and Ruth pass back and forth a bottle of vodka. They roll their eyes at girls teetering on high heels as if on stilts. There is a catwalk erected. There is going to be a fashion show. One model sets herself on fire at the end of the catwalk, to the roar of the crowd. She is then swallowed up in a blanket and extinguished as two men carry her backstage.
Agnes sees someone she knows and leaves Ruth alone, pressing up against the wall. Agnes always a lightning bug agitating against the glass jar, always somewhere better to go. Alone Ruth feels like a little girl who has invaded her mother’s closet.
Why are you here? The man next to her is well-tailored and groomed, wearing a designer suit over a white T-shirt with no tie. Ruth had been aware that he was eavesdropping on her and Agnes’ banter, and she even caught him scribbling a few words on a pad of paper he kept in his pocket. He looked like a painter, Ruth thought. Some sort of artist. He was the same height as Ruth. He had an impish quality to him, and a handsome, clean-shaven face.
Why am I here? Ruth repeats. She is warm and tingly from the vodka. She is not wasted but with a little effort she could soon be. (Oh, our wasted youth.)
Yes. The man takes out a pack of Gauloises, offers Ruth one. She accepts. The cigarette tickles the back of her throat. Who do you know here? He is not unfriendly. He is curious. Green girls are used to the attention of strange men.
Oh, my friend invited me.
The redhead? He asks. He has a sinister look about his face, but it is pleasantly sinister, like Buster Keaton.
Yes, the redhead.
She’s the Big Bad Wolf, isn’t she? He mock-whispers in her ear.
Who, Agnes?
The man puffs on his cigarette elegantly. He shrugs. Whatever her name is.
So, does that make me Little Red Riding Hood?
He appraises her. You’re not Gramma, darling.
Ruth feels comfortable joking with him. How do I know you’re not the Big Bad Wolf?
His eyes glimmer amused. I could be. I suppose that is correct.
I’m Ruth. She offers impetuously.
He gives her his hand as if on a silver tray. Delighted Ruth. I’m Teddy.
Hi Teddy.
Ruth. Like Keats’ poem. Are you sick for home, my baby Ruth?
Home? She considers for a moment. I don’t know. I mean, what is home?
This amuses Teddy greatly. Aah, I see. You are like the poem. Like Ruth in the Bible. Are you wandering, Ruth? Are you peri-pat-etic? He is teasing her, but she does not mind. A sort of insistence hung beneath the surface.
I don’t know what that means. I’m a bit pathetic, however.
But what are you trying to find, Madame Pathos?
She smiles, not knowing what to say.