“Oh, shit. I see what you mean.”
“No, you don’t!
I was never so embarrassed in all my life! You should have seen me tiptoeing past his wife on my way out the
door! I don’t know why the idiot jerk-off fool just couldn’t leave things the way they were—I was making money, he was happy. The stupid, stupid bastard!”
“He was
hap—
Liv, what are you saying—”
“Shut up, Max! JUST SHUT UP!”
Livy didn’t go back to work for Ned Sampras. I never found out what really went on between the two of them in that guy’s attic, but if I owned a ranch I’d bet it that it wasn’t the line of jive Livy tried halfheartedly to sell me that day she demanded to be retrieved from the street corner. My guess was that somewhere along the line she’d entered into an intimate relationship—the exact nature of which I didn’t know (and didn’t want to know)—with Ned in exchange for lucre, and that something had gone wrong; maybe he’d wanted more out of it—or maybe
she
did. Once certain lines were crossed—I was thinking of Fred here, and others for all I knew—what did one more trick matter? Besides, Livy took a perverse pride in being a slick prostitute…. What this latest fuckup meant, of course, was that we were without an income all over again, and that somebody was going to have to go out there and hunt down a good enough job so that we could survive from day to day.
Since my fear of the world was temporarily in remission (the condition mysteriously came and went), I gave it a shot, but for some inexplicable reason, my marketability was at an all-time low. I filed application after application for anything and everything under the sun, but nobody ever called and invited me in for an interview. Secretly I was relieved—I was much too absorbed
in my book to take on a nine-to-fiver. If I was put out on the street for the crime of financial insolvency, then so be it. I often consoled myself with the thought that I knew of no one in my lifetime who’d been tossed into debtors’ prison.
Livy saw it differently. These days a new, reckless determination had shown up in her demeanor. Watching her across the kitchen table, I would speculate on what had fueled it. Was it despair over what had gone sour between us? Or was it Fred she was still pining over? Was it maybe something I was blind to altogether? You never really know where you stand when it comes to the inner life of a woman. There’s some basic part of the female that by nature has to keep you—the male—in the dark. If not, then what’s the point in being the opposite sex? Whatever it was, she seemed bent on pulling herself by her bootstraps out of the shithole we’d dug for ourselves. Morning after morning she patched herself together in front of the bathroom mirror and set out to beat the bushes for something decent. As I watched her go out the door, I wished her good luck….
S
unday afternoon. After the tolling of the church bells, sleepy boredom. The weather is fine, it’s early spring, so Livy and I decide to take a hike through the woods of the South Mountain Reservation twenty minutes away. Afterward, in the parking lot, she stops dead, as if she’s seen a ghost. She’s eyeballing a man who’s standing on an incline of dead grass, hands in pockets, admiring the view of the pond in the distance.
What is it?
She snaps out of her trance and hustles toward the car. Let’s get out of here, she says, sitting rigidly in the passenger’s seat.
What’s wrong?
No answer, only a fixed gaze at nothing.
As we roll out of the lot, I take a closer gander at the object of her scrutiny. He’s not much, a lump of a guy with a middle-aged paunch hanging over his belt and a balding pate. What could he possibly mean to Livy?
The incident is enough to nudge her into one of her remote, melancholic states by the time we reach the apartment. As usual when that happens, she flops on the bed and stares at the ceiling. I find a spot on the floor and wait for what’s going to come. Because I know something will—it always does when she gets like this.
I had an affair with him. Her voice is far away, like a burble in a dream.
What? Who are you talking about? I say, though I know damned well who she means.
That man in the parking lot near the woods. Michael Goldfarb. A jeweler.
I hate the way she pronounces the word “Michael.”
“Mi
chael.” Why not just fucking “Mike"? Why does she have to be so goddamned
delicate
with it? Women have a maddening habit of being entirely too reverential with their ex-lovers’ names, handling them like pricey crystal vases.
Yes … I thought I recognized him out there. At first I wasn’t sure. It’s been years since I’ve set eyes on Michael.
So why didn’t you just go up to him and say something?
Oh, no. No, I couldn’t.
Why not? Who is he, the Prince of Wales?
No…. It was just too—
Too what?
You know.
No, I don’t.
Oh, you know—just too
intense
between us. What does she expect me to say to that? And why an “affair"? He’s married. Two kids. His wife didn’t understand him at all.
Mm-hmm.
Michael treated me like a queen. Gave me things all the time, whenever he came to see me. Flowers. Clothes. Jewelry. Took me to the finest restaurants. He would be at my side the minute he could get away from his family. And I would wait for him. I would have done anything for him.
Anything.
Another revelation. With Livy, there are always more lovers to learn about, to be compared with. And you never know when you’re going to be treated to a lesson.
He’s nothing to look at, I know, but what does it matter? Look at you. You’re handsome, but you don’t love me the way Michael loved me. So when I saw him today, I just—
What?
Remembered. How it was at the end. How it couldn’t go on. Because he couldn’t bring himself to leave his kids. If it was just his wife who was involved, I wouldn’t be here right now.
Livy’s eyes well up with tears. She rolls over and buries her face in the pillow.
I stare at the back of her neck. What I should do is take a carving knife and sink it in there, get this over with once and for all. What a grand thing love is.
Instead, after a long time, I get off the floor and climb on top of her, my hard cock searching for a way inside her body.
Get away from me!
she howls into the pillow.
Just leave me alone. I don’t want you near me.
Once again Livy’s looks saved her. This time she was going to hump tables with a bevy of other cute young waitresses at Gennaro’s, a glossy pizza-and-beer joint in West Orange that ran a comedy club in the basement on weekends. All kinds of people passed through Gennaro’s—on-the-rise comics, prizefighters, low-level mobsters, celebrities on the way down. Since the customer turnover was phenomenal, she could expect to haul in anywhere between fifty and seventy-five a night in gratuities along with her hourly salary—not bad in a pinch. She started on Tuesday.
A few days later my heap finally died. I persuaded one of the mechanics from the Exxon across the street to help me push it into his garage for an estimate. Autopsy results: shot fuel pump, leaky transmission, ring job needed. There was no point in having the car fixed, and even less money to do it. The beast no longer had blue book value, so I had no choice but to call the junkyard. When the guy arrived he handed me twenty-five in cash and hitched the flecked green dinosaur to his truck. I got all choked up when I watched its dim taillights sink into the river of traffic on Bloomfield Avenue. Gone forever…. I’d never see her again. A car can do that to you—the Impala and I had been together a long time.
Since now we had only Livy’s Nova between us, I became her chauffeur to Gennaro’s every evening. Back at the apartment I banged away at
The Old Cossack
in the heat of the summer nights, the sweat rolling off my arms in clammy rivulets like a boxer in the ring. I was in a delirium now to finish the damned thing and, what the hell—maybe chance it out on the open market.
Some nights my old pal Bernie Monahan would show up at the apartment, and we’d head out to a nightclub to try and pick up women—he was bored with his longtime girlfriend, and one look at yours truly convinced him that I was in even more immediate need of a change of scenery.
But we weren’t really trying very hard, and when the bars shut down most of our forays ended in a highway diner over eggs and home fries and coffee, to be followed by long bullshit sessions about how my life had turned into such a minefield.
Bernie had his opinions.
“That one’s a fruitcake, buddy. You have to get out of there before something happens. Something
serious.”
“I’m not arguing with you.”
“Either she’s going to kill you, or you’re going to lose it altogether and murder her.”
“Not unless one of us ends up in prison or the state insane asylum first. But every time I make a move to break away, she threatens to bump herself off. And I’m not even sure at this point that I could survive on my own, man.”
“You really think she’d actually do something to herself?”
“I think she’s capable of
anything,
Bernie. God’s honest truth.”
“You gotta be tough as nails then! Let her know who’s boss! That your life is your life. That you won’t stand for any more shit from her.”
“Yeah…. The trouble is it’s not that easy.”
He shrugged. “How’s the sex?”
“Still white hot, believe it or not. I never get tired of Livy. It’s like all the madness stokes the fire.”
“Even though she probably fucked this ex-con, Fred.” “Yeah. Go figure.”
“And who knows who else, right? … I don’t get it, Max. The whole thing sounds wacky to me. Look at yourself, for Christ’s sake! You live by night like a vampire, you can’t hold down the lowest job, and you write stuff nobody wants to read.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“We
know,
if your past history is any indication. The point is, what are you going to do to turn this thing around? You’re like a … a
worm,
at the mercy of this femme fatale’s every whim. Either find a way out or keep the bitch in line once and for all!”
“Sure, Bernie, whatever you say…. ”
When we parted ways in the early morning, my friend had me half convinced that my war with Livy was one I was capable of winning. One half of me made resolutions to the other. I promised myself a new regimen. I swore a new defiance the next time a conflict broke out. No way I was going to let Livy get the best of me—even if some sick part of me still loved her.
B
y the time I had to pick Livy up at the restaurant, my kite would do a nosedive and I was completely disheartened all over again. I shuffled inside and nursed a beer at the bar while the waitstaff tallied up their depredations for the night. If the take was good, spirits were high. If it wasn’t, there was sure to be lots of grumbling about all the cheapskates they’d had to wait on hand and foot.
Livy made a whole new set of best friends among the workers
at Gennaro’s. The best of the best was Mitchell Jeremy. Behind his back Mitch was referred to as the “gay caballero” by some of the he-man wiseguy types who hung around hitting on the waitresses. He sported earrings and makeup long before that crap became au courant. Like most fags in enemy territory, Mitch kept himself and his lifestyle enshrouded in a cloud of secrecy. His jokes were on the inside and under the cuff. His repartee was quick, clever, and bitchy. The guy wasn’t easy to talk to, but Livy got along with him famously. Like other effeminate males, he enjoyed trading his maquillage secrets with women, and he and the waitresses had their own clique, from which I was unofficially excluded.
Thus began another round of nocturnal carousing for Olivia. She and her group began hanging out at Mitchell Jeremy’s house in Livingston, which had been left to him when his parents retired to Florida. There, according to Livy, they knocked down a few drinks, smoked some weed, and watched a little early-morning television. Whether that was what they were really up to was anybody’s guess. It was okay—when she called me off I didn’t mind being left to my own devices.
My problems at Gennaro’s began with a cat by the name of Siffuzzi. He was young, like me, and one of those privileged souls who never seemed to have to be anywhere or have anything to do. When he had a few under his belt or some blow up his nose, he liked to crow about his Mob connections, which I suspected was nothing more than braggadocio since the real item for the most part kept quiet about it. Livy took that stuff much more seriously than I did—she was always impressed by any mention of La Cosa Nostra. Maybe it was her Latin blood.
At first Siffuzzi was cool, buying me drinks whenever I stopped in to take Livy home, chatting me up about my novel,
riffing on the characters who frequented the restaurant. But as time passed, he developed a strange, inexplicable hostility toward me, until his friendly banter had turned mocking, even vicious, and one night….
“Man, that’s some deal you got, sittin’ around scribblin’ shit nobody’s ever going to read while your girlfriend slaves to pay your rent.”
This was delivered like an observation about the weather. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—which is always the case when something comes out of left field.
“Since when is it any of your business? Anyway, that’s not exactly the way it is, Siffuzzi.”
“Bullshit.
I got eyes in my head. I see what you’re up to. You’re a sleazy fucking pimp, Zajack!”
I turned to face the jerk-off douchebag.
“Who are you to talk about deals? I don’t see you doing much of anything but holding up the ass-end of a bar and blowing hot air, Siffuzzi. That chain around your neck must be cutting off the flow of blood to your brain. If you have one.”
“Fuck you, Zajack!”
“Are you trying to jump into my shit here, Siffuzzi? What the fuck is your problem?”
“Fuck you, man!
I’m gonna kick your ass!” He tossed the dregs of his beer into my face. Before I could react, Jimbo the bartender quickly stepped out from behind his station and forced his body between us.