girl in the hat

(photo by johnwilliamsphd on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwilliamsphd/)
Last night Wayne did his customary circuit of the clubs and didn’t find his way back to his own apartment until 4:23 am. He would still be asleep if Mrs. Espinoza hadn’t come at noon. She bumps around in the kitchen and hums as she cleans.

Today he will do at least two thousand words, do some Bikram, maybe dinner with Drew. He’s currently writing a screenplay about a struggling hunky writer who sells himself to a washed-up celebrity who wants a second chance at stardom—sort of like Sunset Boulevard, only different—and he’s watching the film again as research. He likes to say that immature writers imitate but mature writers steal, an idea he lifted from T.S. Eliot.

In school his teachers loved him, especially English teachers. He stole their hearts by adapting short stories and essays by obscure Russian writers and signing his name. He wouldn’t call it cheating. Rephrasing perhaps, or interpreting, reimagining for a modern audience. While Drew says her daily prayer to the photographs of authors she loves and admires as figures of authority or parental gurus who might someday invite her in to their literary houses and teach her how to speak their mother tongue, to Wayne, books are just good ideas with potential to get better, with his help. That’s what makes her the better teacher: in a selfish, cynical world, people will pay a lot for the enthusiasm of their biggest fan.

But he’s the better writer. He doesn’t say it out loud, but he knows it’s true. It takes a writer to know a writer and when he recognizes true talent, when the words on the page fill him so full he must look up for a moment just to breathe before he continues, that’s when he secretly applauds himself for demonstrating his own talent once again. Because it takes one to know one, he appreciates his appreciation.

Now, lolling in his kingsize, blinking in the glow of his widescreen, he feels engorged with it, brimming, scribbling notes on the back of an envelope, and petting the front of his shorts pensively when Mrs. E knocks loudly.

“Hello? Are you ready for the clean?”

He jumps up, thumbs the pause button, and the screen freezes on a tableful of photographs in frames backing the sofa where Gloria Swanson lies draped over William Holden like an old fox throw. He adjusts his robe before opening the door. Mrs. E. peers into the darkness over his shoulder. “I was just working,” he assures her.

“Do you want me come back later?”

“No, no. I can take a little break. It’s okay.”

She takes one step into the room, pausing to let her eyes adjust, then peers around at the curtains drawn tight against the day, rumpled sheets, DVD collection spilled over the cowhide rug, heaps of discarded clothing, dirty glasses. She sniffs once but says nothing.

About a year ago she caught him with someone. She had been vacuuming in the hallway when Wayne’s naked friend had popped out of the bathroom door behind her. “Boo!” he’d said, like it was all a big joke, and then he had lingered in the hallway making small talk, not even lifting a finger or a hand or anything to cover himself. Wayne watched the whole thing through the cracked door; he had the comforter pulled up to his chin and, although she never said a word about it to him, he stopped inviting guys over after that. She’s the cleaning lady, after all, she has three children and a cross on a chain around her neck, she is virtuous and immaculate and good, and every time she rattles her heavy keys or treads with extra-heavy steps down the hallway, he feels guilty.

He grabs the envelope off the bed and retreats down the hall, past wall nooks filled with his collection of various clever art objects , through his midcentury livingroom to the sunny kitchen where the black-and-white tiles reek of ammonia and the built-in breakfast nook and the nice old gas stove are gleamingly clean. Thanks to the money his parents left him, plus a trust from a wealthy grandmother and frequent gifts from Aunt Bea, his south-facing apartment is twice the size of Drew’s and overlooks the courtyard. The pool in the courtyard was filled in years ago and replaced with a bright green lawn, lemon trees and a cement fountain where half-naked nymphs cavort in spray.

On the kitchen counter he finds the bowl of ripe mangoes Mrs. E must have brought. He fondles the fruit, sniffs out the ripest then uses his sharpest knife to peel, bites into the flesh and lets the juice run down his chin and forearms while he looks out the window at the fountain below, flexing his biceps.

When he told Drew he was considering implants in his arms, she had just stared. Then she began making retching noises and he offered to loan her some money to have her bags removed and those frowny things on her forehead filled in, he was halfway joking.

The first time he saw her was near the beginning of freshman year. Dave, Wayne’s roommate in the dorm, was a beefy farm boy who liked to sit at the foot of his bed with his barbells in hand, pumping weight and staring from the mirror on the back of the bathroom door to his giant bedside poster of a buxom blonde with an all-over tan-from-a-can. Dave did not like Wayne, said he was funny but said it with a curled lip, so Wayne spent as much time away from their room as possible. He was sitting on the first floor of the library by a window, with Anna Karenina open on his lap, looking out at dark branches against a pale sky when she came loping down the walkway with her arms full of books. One tumbled down and she did a funny limbo-move to pick it up, then paused for a moment on the other side of the window, staring at him. He raised his hand to wave a little, then saw her blank and mildly disappointed expression and realized that the glass must be reflective. He looked into her face and knew that she, like he, as all writers must, was the kind of girl who understood sadness. Her sadness made him happy; it meant he wasn’t alone.

Since then, he’s made it his job to cheer her up. Last Christmas he gave her the three-foot plaster Madonna he had swiped off someone’s lawn. He put a big shiny bow around its waist and a hot pink vibrator in its cupped plaster hands. Drew had stood there staring at Mary, knitting mental sweaters until finally she asked him what it was supposed to mean. “It means merry, merry Christmas to you!” He’d said, and hugged her tight. She just didn’t know what to make of it. To Drew, everything is significant: if the phone rings and she picks up and the line is dead or if he forgets to call one day or if he’s going out wearing his best gold and enamel cufflinks, if her computer crashes or her car dies or she sees a familiar-looking face in a crowd, it must mean something. She’s the kind of person who answers existential questions by picking up a book, flipping and pointing randomly to a word. But that’s what he likes about her, too.

Drew thinks he is beautiful. She says he’s going to be a famous writer and that he’ll make a great father someday and when she says those things, they become not merely possible but loaded heavy with potential and when he looks in the mirror he sees how her words have changed the shape of his face. He’s not going to tell her she’s wrong. He likes her version of things and it’s nice to be somebody’s superman, even if it’s not realistic.

The mango in his hands is warm and soft, its flavor almost cloying. It is like a hunk of flesh in his fist. He takes another bite. Juice drips down his arms. In his screenplay, the actress will be fabulous. He’s the writer and he can do whatever he wants. Just like a fallen mango, her face will read like the picture of submission, but it’s only an act. She’ll be older and wiser and much, much juicier than any piece of green fruit. Someone like Jessica Lange would be perfect. And his writer will be cute and clueless, too full of himself and youth and hunger for fame to understand. The camera will capture all kinds of glorious moments flitting across her face which his stupid protagonist will be too dull to notice.

Wayne laughs out loud, an impious chortle. He is half-hard under his robe but careful to keep himself pressed against the cabinets in case Mrs. E returns unexpectedly. He turns to the sink to wash his hands, thinking that the world is made up of two different people: The noble who read poetry and the naughty who write it. He chuckles softly as the water warms in his hands. The good ones might sleep softly at night but the bad ones sure do enjoy being awake.

He turns off the tap. In the next room, Mrs. E has switched on the vacuum. The sound of someone cleaning his house is thrilling. He grabs his pen and scribbles on the envelope: The virtuous will work hard and the debauched will hardly work.

He is suddenly ashamed of himself. He likes Mrs. E. She is real, solid as a piece of furniture, true as any story you’ve ever heard and when she’s around, he wants to mind his manners. He tightens the belt of his robe and uses a sponge to sop up the juice on the counter.

When his parents died—first her, then him, both cancer, in the same year— he went to live with his father’s sister Bea in her cold San Francisco house. As the biggest real estate agent in town, Aunt Bea was rarely home. He lived with her for eight years and they never ate a meal together except at a restaurant for a special occasion. Even on Sunday she would rise at 5:30, dress in the Armani suit she had purchased to match the color palette of the most expensive house she was currently selling, drink one espresso while she studied the Real Estate and Financial sections of the paper and was invariably gone by 7:30. If he was awake, he’d lie in bed listening to her low heels clack across the wood floor above him. When he was still young, Wayne would try to join her at the breakfast bar but after awhile it didn’t seem necessary. They grew into an unspoken agreement—she paid the bills and provided shelter and he did well in school and stayed out of trouble, no need to chitchat any more about it. Lupe the housekeeper was there to feed him, make fresh tortillas in the morning, iron his school uniform and tuck him in at night. The tortillas were delicious.

When Mrs. E notices Wayne standing in the doorway, she jumps and clicks off the vacuum. “You scare me!”
“I’m sorry.” She waits for him to speak. “How’s it going?”

“Good.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No thank you.” She stands frozen with her finger on the vacuum’s switch.

“Well. I’m just going to go downstairs for a second to check the mail. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Okay.”

He lingers for a moment, trying to think of something to say. The curtains are pulled back and the windows are thrown open. Splashing sounds and dancing refractions rise up from the fountain in the courtyard. “It looks much better in here already. Thank you.”

She smiles and waves him out the door. “It is nothing.”

…

Wayne adjusts the belt of his robe as he pads down the hallway toward the stairs, pausing at Drew’s door to knock. No answer.

On the floor below, someone’s been cooking with garlic. He passes the place where the cats live—he sometimes hears them growling and scratching at the door—and past Cassandra’s apartment with the grey jade plant slowly turning to rubber in the dark hallway. He’s friendly with everyone in the building and knows most by name. Once a year he has them all over for a party at his place but he doesn’t expect to be invited back to their apartments—no need to pretend to be best friends, just give him a nod and a wave or a cheerful smile, just enough to make him feel like he belongs here, like this is home, that’s all he asks.
Wayne chirps “Hola!” to the gardener pruning the lemon trees that ring the courtyard. He’s fumbling in the pocket of his robe for the key to his mailbox when he notices the man standing on the other side of the wrought iron security gate.

“Hey, would you mind opening? I can’t remember the code.” The young man’s smile is wide and slightly crooked. He’s good-looking, slim and hunched over, with lots of blonde hair falling into his brown eyes.

“Oh, sure.” Wayne holds the door open. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new in the building?”

“I’m visiting family from out of town.” His rumpled clothing looks slept in. “Thanks, dude. I actually had the number written on my hand but it wore off.” He holds up his hand to prove it. There’s a black smudge on his palm.

“No problem.” Wayne inserts the key into his mailbox and pulls out a stack of mail: two bills, three catalogues, The New Yorker, and an envelope with Aunt Bea’s impeccable cursive looped across the front. “I guess you shouldn’t have washed your hands,” he says to the young man, who laughs and fumbles in his pockets while Wayne tears open the envelope and peeks in. Inside is a check for $2000 with “happy birthday!” scrawled across the memo line, but nothing else. No card, no letter. Wayne double checks the envelope.

The young man clears his throat. “The problem is I’m supposed to get groceries before my sister—Cassandra; Cass? — gets home. I know there are five numbers, but I can’t read them anymore.” He shows Wayne his hand again: the dirty palm, the black dirt caked under his fingernails. “I promised I’d make her dinner.”

“Well.” Wayne checks his pockets and finds his fountain pen and the sticky envelope with his notes, so he jots down the security code on the empty envelope from Aunt Bea instead and hands it over to the kid who looks obviously harmless and just a bit desperate. Wayne smiles. “No one will ever accuse me of thwarting a home-cooked meal.”