CHAPTER 19
Walking its streets after days away from The Big Apple, car horns explode to test your bearings, and people your patience; that memory of the countryside Earthy bouquet gives over to its industrial cousins — car exhaust and sewer fumes — a connoisseur’s aromas of parfumerie d’urban. Comforted by the pressure of commuters’ elbows in your lumbar, you reacquaint with the patterns recently despised (and softly regretted): dog fights, construction crew catcalls, noisome plumbing, domestic disputes spilled into hallways, panhandlers, garbage truck hydraulics (mimicking sexual groans), coffee bar babble, street performers, people-watching on the steps of the Met, the out-the-door line at Curry in a Hurry, reading a book at a bus stop, wine tasting in the cellar at Abbracciavento’s, and a hundred other images of life as we want it; as we want it for now. You feel as the spoiled child does, whose manipulative tears win the toy: triumphant, but a little ashamed.
NY is not to blame.
Henry’s eyes hold this thought as he greets me on the street under The Parkview’s green awning. He cuts me a curt nod and a lofty smile. I don’t know why he continues to bully me, when I’ve become a frequent caller of Karen K’s. Outwardly, his manner is unimpeachable, tone deferential, attention respectful. Behind this composure I see that he still wants to beat his brawny fists against my bones. I know this because one day I asked him if he wanted to beat my bones with his brawny fists, given the chance. He answered enigmatically, with obvious thought at the absurdity of the question. “Why, Mr Orth, I think we know each other well enough by now. Violence has always been unnecessary.” He concluded with a curt nod and a lofty smile.
Lightning flashes above the park, reflected against Henry’s gold tooth. “You’ve just missed her, Mister Orth.” Raindrops drum on the awning. “She left a while back, and I think…” He pauses, puts a big hand against his neck, looks up and down the street. “Which way, now, which way did she go?” I ask him what she was wearing. “A gentleman doesn’t notice every woman who walks in front of him, only the woman he’s wedded to.” His deflection tells me she’s wearing bag lady chic. I remind Henry that I’m not the enemy, and zip up my blue hoodie against a newly rushing north wind. Henry animates himself, turns heel and points downtown. I take off at a jog.
Pelts of rain spatter my parka. I scan far ahead for a green medical smock, or white painter’s pants, or a brown sports jacket, or a prison-orange jumpsuit. Karen’s wardrobe is limited. She’s nowhere close, though, not with that hound’s gait. If she’s stopped along a side street for a garbage can snack, I have half a chance to come across her. I’ve seen her do this, always when lots of people are around, to maximum effect. Her china tea service comes to mind, the white sugarcakes and salmon finger sandwiches she has shared out between us, so quintessentially English High Tea. I know what this woman has in her refrigerator: freshly braised meats (turkey and roasted pork loin), juice cartons of orange and golden grapefruit, two dozen eggs in their containers, bottled water and cans of beer, milk in a crystal jug, two heads of lettuce, and enough leftover containers to feed a family reunion picnic.
At 69th Street the rain shower passes on a rush of wind. The pavement reflects a sealskin’s sheen. When the wind shifts, the sun breaks through the clouds like a laser. A traffic light stops me at 68th opposite one of Central Park’s gated entrances. She could have gone into the park, here, or have gone straight, or turned right and marched over to Broadway. Her outfits I know, her routes tend toward the random.
I have a hunch she’s taken Amsterdam Avenue or Broadway, streets where lots of people can mind her and ignore her. I hustle through a group of tourists when a blurred trail crosses my sight line, a chartreuse splatter. I stop at the corner and, across the street, forty yards ahead, I see Karen K’s stooped body. She’s in line to board a southbound bus with shoppers, school truants, and lunch-hour commuters all jockeying for position. If I’m lucky, the bus driver won’t allow her stink to sully his passengers’ air.
A bus pulls to the curb and its doors spring open, people pour out in ones and twos. I’m not yet across the street; the light changes and I want to launch myself off the curb, but have to reel back as a red-light scoff peels past my kneecaps. Then I’m off in a sprinter’s dash. I see Karen through the crowd, she’s getting on the bus. The line shrinks. The last in line gets on as I dead-run between a gaggle of females staggered by shopping bags, and step through the door. The driver looks at me like I’m taking up his time. I give him a New York glare as my chest heaves, fish my hand in my pocket for a token, and he hits the gas as soon as the silver disk slides down the slot.
I peer along the aisle. Left and right. Something’s wrong.
She isn’t here! That chartreuse jersey she’s used to transmit the slogan, “Look at me, I’m a fucking bag lady!” isn’t in me view. All the seats are taken and people stand in the aisle, but the bus is not so packed that I can’t pan the passengers with one sweep. Except for the truants.
Four of them gather in a huddle at the rear doors, their backs to me and the wandering eyes of the driver. They’re speaking a Spanish patois mixing street English and Puerto Rican slum, hands fly up and around, like gesticulations of the nervous and violent. I hear slaps on skin but this isn’t happy High Fives. There’s no laughter, swearing, what you’d expect from street punks getting their rods up on a jolly ride. I walk down the aisle, feeling the bus rock side to side. It’s how they’re standing that makes me notice them.
They’ve surrounded someone. The flying hands are taking aim at a head, a violent passion dance that escalates. I see them push-pull a chartreuse jersey like it’s a beach ball. Karen’s face appears between their shoulders, her white teeth bared like a cornered she-wolf. She has her hands up, managing the boys’ slaps pretty well while jabbering back at them in Spanglish filled with (if my Spanish isn’t too rusty) taunts and insults. Frustrated that their slaps aren’t having much effect, the truants fold their hands into fists. Karen yells at them. “Pierdase! Fuck off, you punks! Vuelva a sus mommas!” I’m halfway down the aisle, side-stepping immovable riders who stand casually ignorant. I get to the middle doors when the bus slows so quickly that I’m knocked backwards. With hope that help is coming, I look at the driver, his head framed in the wide rectangle of mirror. But his eyes are forward. The bus is merely at the next stop, and I’m to get no help. He’ll mind his own business until blood is spilled or a gunshot reports a casualty.
In the back, two passengers slide past the truants and out to the sidewalk. The exit doors snap closed with a thwack. The truants turn their heads, distracted; they’re kids, but big kids, with wiry arms and fierce faces, the look of anger and po’boy that itches to let out its frustration on the weak. I catch sight of Karen’s face again, and see she wants to teach them otherwise. The bus jolts forward and its momentum moves me toward these punks. My heart pounds in my chest because I’m one and they’re four. Except now we’re two-on-four, because Karen K’s voice grows above theirs in challenge. “Cunts! Cunts! Get me off this bus! I’ll fucking kill you spics!” Her shouts draw the attention of other passengers. I move closer, still unacknowledged by the punks. Karen blocks two blows, full-on punches, but three more blitz from up high and underneath, striking her head and chin. Her eyes roll in their sockets.
“Hey!” I yell. The punks look my way. Adrenaline surges through me and I feel lightheaded, not strong. They square up. Karen lashes two of them on the necks with her open hand, cat scratches that leave red lines like angry tattoos. They spin around and give her more shots to the face, harder now, that send her sideways and off her feet. She sinks to the floor and her head bounces on the runner. She’s dazed but still mobile, and brings her legs into her chest for protection.
Then the biggest boy screams at me. “What the fuck you want, ass-fuck!” Spittle flies. He’s smaller than me by half a head. I answer on a fast jab to his sneering face and feel his nose flatten beneath my knuckles. The kid cries out and falls backwards. Blood flows down his mouth and
shirt. The second punk squares up, but, on the floor, Karen kicks him between the legs, the heels of her construction boots leading the force. This boy buckles, his hands clutched to his crotch while his eyes try to jump off his face. Karen rears back and kicks again at the third punk just as I throw two more punches, sending this kid into a seat next to a frightened passenger.
The one truant who remains standing backs off, his head swiveling with indecision now that the fight has changed tides. I shoulder my way past him and take my bag lady by the lapels of her jacket, pull her off the floor and back up, up the aisle, and stop at the center doors. The punk yells at us and kicks his fallen warriors, urging them to fight, but he’s toothless without a gang. The bus stops and I shove Karen out the doors.
She stumbles on the pavement and, with my hands so strongly hitched to her clothing, I trip, our feet tangle, and we both go down on the pavement. We’re flat on our backs facing at the bus. The punks flip us the bird behind the windows. One holds his bleeding nose. Another kicks the rear doors open and spits. The bus lurches forward and its fumes cover the sidewalk in blue mist.
Karen yells, “What the fuck’s the matter with you!”
She rolls on her side and pushes up on an elbow. Blood beads across a pear-shaped abrasion on her right temple. Her chin sports blue knuckle marks and her hair is cockeyed. The hat is gone. I look around. People stare and try not to stare. The bulk of the crowded sidewalk waffles on, their legs and feet dangerously close to our hands and heads.
Karen sits up, wipes a palm against the side of her head, and says, “Mind your own business, sculptor.” She looks at the blood that’s come away on her hand. She frowns. Then she laughs, wicked, short palliatives, soft and private sounds that go on a moment longer than street theater should. People have moved on; we’re now an obstruction. I stand so that I can wave people aside. I crouch to help Karen up because she’s still laughing and looking at her bloodied hand.
I feel wild, out of control, and snap at her. “Look at me! Hey! Wake up, you crazy bitch!” She stares up, addled and blinded by the sun. “Is this some kind of experiment with you? Thrill-seeking. Dangerous living. Picking fights with street scum!”
She pushes my hands away and rolls onto her hands and knees. I take her by the arm anyway, a gesture of support and protection, but she’ll have none of this and jerks her arm out of my grip. I step back. When she finally gets to her feet she fixes me with a mean look and grits her teeth.
“Stay away from me!”
I step back, worry striking me that Karen has a chicken knife and is in a mind to use it. She turns up Central Park West, towards home. People are not giving way, though, and she pushes at them, and begins to flail her arms and legs. The crowd moves around her and she takes three steps before she must stop. She wavers like a tree in a storm, takes two more steps, and collapses on the pavement. Three people bend down to help but, seeing a pile of filthy clothing and the rancid hair of this un-person, they pull up and leave her where she lies.
I run forward and kneel at Karen’s side. A trio of suits, red ties flapping, laugh and say something about my “mother.” A few Oh-dears and Look at this! and one Jesus, the filth that washes up from our clean sewers, these taunts come and go with their passing shadows.
Karen struggles to her knees, this time accepting my help. Her hands reach over her shoulders and clasp me for support. I look in the street for a police car, and sure enough a cruiser has slowed to see what has caused our sidewalk commotion. I start to say something, call out, but with a violent gesture from his partner, the driver rolls forward and is gone in traffic. The Good Samaritan helping The Bag Lady gets no leverage with NY’s finest.
“Take me home,” Karen says. She looks at me, the right side of her face bruised, streaked with blood. “Please.”
The doctor has been with her for half an hour. When he arrived he gave a long look at her clothing but didn’t ask the obvious question (he already knew; he’d introduced himself as “Ms Kosek’s doctor”). The doctor only casually acknowledged me as he handed over his hat; I was the help, perhaps, a person he needn’t concern himself with because a patient commanded his professional attention. A wealthy patient. I dropped his hat on the chair beside the telephone table. He went into Karen’s bedroom and shut the door, leaving me in the living room with Henry, who looked at his watch and then at me. I wondered if he thought it was his job now to escort me downstairs, now that I’d done the right thing, the good deed, or to leave me here, alone in Karen’s living room. His decision would be motivated by loyalty, but having allowed me upstairs three times before today’s sudden reappearance at the front doors with a bloodied Karen sagging against my shoulder, he wasn’t sure how far his influence reached. Henry checked his watch a second time, nervously, and told me that he needed to return to his desk.
Standing in the hallway, his silver buttons gleaming in the chandelier’s light, he said, “Thank you, Mr Orth, for bringing Ms Kosek home.” I nodded, but was so flooded with one question that I needed to ask, “Do you know why she does this?” He shook his head and left.
I found myself alone, then, in Karen’s big, silent living room. The kitchen clock counted seconds while, through the double doors of her bedroom, I heard muffled voices. The doctor’s angry tones overrode the clipped argument of his patient. As Henry had done earlier, I checked my watch, though the kitchen clock’s ticking struck me louder than my own thumping heart, and with equal time. I realized that I should be home now, dressed appropriately to meet a pair of collectors Belinda had scheduled for a visit. Not of the importance for the falling sky, but a commission is promised food money. If the doctor wasn’t long, I thought, I could talk with Karen a moment and still get home.
I wasn’t supposed to have been anywhere near here today. Mrs Cowper and Napoleon had veterinary appointments for their yearly distemper shots, and I’m in charge of that because their owners prefer to pay me for that time-wasting chore. In fact I didn’t mind, and had put aside two hours with the pooches. But the vet had had three cancellations and, when I got to the offices, she was practically waiting with syringes in hand to stab the little mutts’ tushies. We were out of the office, strolling down the street, in twenty minutes. This “chore” earned me a flat rate. I dropped the dogs back at their homes, collected my fee under the stink-eye of both butlers in charge of household accounts, and skipped out the door, like a pirate on the deck of a captured treasure ship. Business is business. So I’d saved two hours and was six blocks from Karen’s place. Why not a quick chat? That’s what I had thought, anyway.
Now I feel the need to wait around, not steal away to the elevator, past Henry with his eyes burning shame into me for upsetting the routine he’d surely come to accept, and even depend on. What I really want is for Karen K to give some sign of recognition that what I did today was more than a good deed; I don’t know what this might be, though. Maybe a smile is all I need. Her world has abruptly penetrated mine — a crazy-minded impulse for a pat on the head — which leaves Belinda waiting impatiently at our loft, no doubt, wondering what has befallen me this time. I wander toward the bedroom doors, seeking curio objects that can keep me near the voices without seeming to eavesdrop should the door fly open and Karen exit on a broom, the doctor’s severed head dangling from her hand. I want to listen for words, catch a phrase, just one sentence or the back-and-forth spat the doctor has surely waged over her foolishness. He has to be doing this, I think, I hope; she needs more than a warning. Will a stern reprimand from someone she knows and respects bring some sense to her delusions? That’s a question.
My first step is tentative, the floor creaks — sounds of an intruder — but my thoughts move my legs and quickly I’m next to the fireplace, conveniently positioned beside the bedroom doors. It’s no use, though, because the voices are smothered and unrecognizable. Wild turkeys might as well be roosting on barn rafters for all I can decipher the sounds into voices, and voices into speech. The mantelpiece holds a big, ro
und-faced alarm clock, the kind with two bells and a hammer between them. I’m reminded of the Pocono’s cabin. The clock’s body is wood, red and highly varnished, with a matching wooden key fitted into the side for winding. It’s a circus clown’s clock because of its size, bigger than a breadbox. And it’s broken, or just unwound. The hour reads three-eleven, with the second hand frozen just past the brass numeral eight. I risk looking further at this piece, and pick up the clock. I upend it in my hands. Its back bears a silver plate screwed into the frame with an inscription:
To Circle City’s own, with affectionate praise and congratulations for a promising career. Your hometown holds you in its pride.
Karen’s from out west, I remember, the California pine country. Of course, that’s why the sequoia redwood. The inscription is dated 1969. I replace it on the mantle.
Beside the clock are two framed photographs. The frames are identical, old-fashioned silver filigree rectangles, big enough for eight-by-ten prints. They must take the maid hours to clean, I imagine. Both pictures are black and white portraits, colors that match the frames. One is a family shot. Pictured on the left is Karen Kristine Kosek, a girl between seven and ten, dressed in a fluffy white dress. She’s sitting on a three-legged stool, smiling happily into the camera. Her mother and father stand behind her, their smiles less jubilant, more formal, parental. One might even describe them as staid. The incongruity is striking, when you look long enough. They must be her parents. They’re dressed in their Sunday best, patternless dark fabrics, their daughter in white chiffon, so multilayered that she looks covered in whipped cream.
The second picture is one taken in her early twenties, by my estimate. Yes, I think, she had once been pretty. This picture is also a set shot, but less formal, a portrait for her first book; a print that wasn’t used but that Karen Kosek had preferred, only she was overruled by the male-dominated publishing establishment. Was that a problem, then? I’m pretty sure it was. On another long, lasting look, I find she’s younger in this picture than I’d first thought. Perhaps college aged. Her face is slimmer and the skin around her eyes unblemished by time or sun. In the bloom of womanhood. She’s recognizable against the image I have of her, the image of the woman in the crowd at the round table, and then that other one of her at the sculpture exhibition. They are images I’m forced to justify, and to mitigate. Karen is still pretty, the woman behind the mask, glimpsed like one sees a ghost, an effect of precise lines clouded in memory’s elusion.
Out front … what has happened? I change my mind again; the two images blend into a brackish mess. No, she is no longer pretty, not really. My sense of beauty is tied to something else, these days. “Say ‘Belinda’ and you’ll be safe, Minus,” I remind myself. Then my lips move to mumble, “Of course she’s recognizable” — the aged Karen K, the one in the bedroom nursing bruises and a knotted skull, she has lines on her mouth, eyes, and jawline; the young Karen Kristine Kosek shows enigmatic emotion (lips parted by a hair’s breadth, as though she’s just spoken; eyes focused at the camera, yet not fully open and without that “flash stung” expression; her black hair is long, and frames her face). When she smiles, her life transforms all her history of that young woman to the pained creature whom I know. She disappears into that image, and the protracted beauty is art wrought as realism, whose hold to society is tangible — the eyes track and allure me to her side; I know I’m not the first nor the five-hundred-and-first. Her countenance — of a Caravaggio bust in a Venetian piazza — is a mix of command, curiosity, and vulnerability, this last a sign of intense compassion for her subject, I have to believe.
I turn away from the photographs. There is a fourth possibility, and it touches me with remorse: she is neither the person of these two photographs nor the woman under the filthy clothing. There are a few ways for me to find out, and I no longer see it as a puzzle. It’s an illusion.
I catch my breath and hear … nothing. No sound escapes from behind the doors. I cock my head. I hear only the tick of the kitchen clock. I glance toward that doorway and see the table around which we’ve sat. It, and the room in which I stand, are like the rooms of a museum, or the settings for a stage play, or the set-up inside an antiques warehouse, where you can buy a complete room furnished in the period-style of any modern decade. I turn to take in the rest of the room and the apartment at large. A long sofa, two narrow chairs; both upholstered in fabric that shines irregularly, silver and pewter tones. A rectangular coffee table holds a thick, glass ashtray, centered. Two matching side tables keep lamps, with conical shades. Rugs of various sizes lie beneath the furniture. A TV and Hi-Fi are shoved — nicely tucked — into a corner below one of the room’s three windows overlooking Central Park. I call it a Hi-Fi because it’s an old player from the Sixties, and that’s what it was called back then; two square speakers like breadboxes. According to Angie and her boyfriend, those teens from the park, the Sixties were the Stone Age.
Through the window, from this vantage point, I can see where, below the green canopy of plane trees, I had talked with them; further on is the black band of asphalt on which I first saw a bag lady, and recognized her under that disguise. Further yet, the benches along the lake, whose blue reflects the sky far more from up high than sitting next to it, is where we’d sat many times, she writing and me noodling. I turn away from the window and let my eyes adjust again to the indoor light, finally bringing the gray and brown colors of the TV and record player into focus again. I hadn’t figured Karen for a television watcher. Music, sure. I turn and scan the floor, looking at the boards and rugs for signs of wear along a path from couch to TV, signs that it’s in frequent use. No scuffs or impressions mare the hardwood parquet; I see a few loose threads but no flattened nap in the rug. I take a closer look at the setup and find, behind the TV and Hi-Fi, that their electrical plugs are pulled from the wall socket and gathered with twist ties. She doesn’t even watch the news.
Here she lives, in this stately four-roomer, its decor 1960’s West Side fashion of its day, designed for those disinterested in building families, who inherited these charming apartments from those who had been the 1920’s fashionable set. High ceilings, wood-framed windows almost to the floor (window seats), all non-standard dimensions that give one room to live. On a table by the door sits a telephone, and goddamn if it’s not a Sixties rotary model! Can Karen Kosek be living in a past of her own making? The highlight of her life was the year that What Beauty? marched up the best-seller lists, which attracted her to the City’s elite: literary, political, artistic, high-society — she had tasted it all. International success and recognition never became what it could have been during the media supernova that was the Eighties. How swift was her fall (in her mind) according to that moment she disowned American culture as a subject for commentary, and art for criticism? She claimed in an interview published a few years later that she’d stopped writing not out of any refusal to write, but her decision was the beginning of another journey, of the sort women must make after a divorce. Journey? I’ll say.
I look around the room again. The red velvet drapes, the iron-grate fireplace, the sound-stage furniture, the pop-mod rugs laid in geometrical calculation to each couch and chair and table. Then I come back to the telephone near the door.
Before there’s a moment to think twice and balk, I take the phone in my hand and rotate the dial seven times. The rotary’s response is loud in the quiet room, the sound of chattering teeth. “Belinda, it’s me.” Her voice is strained. I wince at how she must feel. “I’m going to be late. Sorry. I ran into some trouble.” Silence, and some talk, and more silence. “No-no, nothing serious. I ran into Karen Kosek on the stree– right, the bag lady and … she was bleeding from the side of her face, honey. I couldn’t just leave her. Someone had beaten her. She asked me for help … she got mugged by– … well, a doctor is in with her now. What? I’m in her apartment.” Belinda has something to say about this. “I’ll tell you about it later.” More talk; we’ve got a business deal in
the works! “Jesus, Belinda, I’m not walking out of here without a good-bye.” When she replies, I think of the excuse I need for everything to make sense. “Listen. One good word from Karen K is worth the collectors ‘missing’ me this time around, and a dozen times more before Christmas. I’ll be home when I can.” Belinda’s response is breathy and firm. “I’ll be just a while,” I tell her, “and don’t worry.” She says she’ll disarm the collectors. That sounds fine with me. “Okay. Hey, I love you, so I’ll see you later.” I hang up. I notice my breath has slowed. Every told lie must have some truth inside, like a painting or a novel. Something strikes the bedroom door from within. I turn around and the door indeed flies open.
The doctor walks out through the open door. He’s smiling. He doesn’t think she needs an MRI (he tells me this as though I am – suddenly! – the man of the house) for the record. Behind him I see a pea-green carpet, an ivory chair, the edge of a bed and a woman’s leg. He has used three stitches on her head gash, he says, hidden above her hairline, which is where all the blood had come from, not the quarter-size abrasion on her temple. He puts on his hat, the old-fashioned kind from the Forties that his white-haired generation still wears. What you see on men’s heads in gangster films. Karen K suddenly appears in the doorway. She’s still in her bag lady outfit, minus the chartreuse coat. The doctor nods at me, steps around my body that has been blocking the door as I spoke to Belinda on the phone, and leaves.
“I need your help, Minus,” Karen says. She beckons me with her hand, fingers outstretched. In the hall, the electronic tone from the elevator sounds. My eyes flitter left, then back to her. She has the bedroom’s double doors open. She says, “I need to take a bath, and I’m shaky.” She has a bandage taped to the right side of her face. Yes, the bum clothes are still on her, but the silver wig is gone, and her hair, short and dark, is matted no less like a bum’s than if she hadn’t bothered with a wig at all. My protest sticks in my throat.
I follow her. She staggers back to the bed and sits on the edge. She motions to the bathroom. I look at the darkened doorway, and at her raised arm. Her finger points like a statue directing some unseen person toward the way. “What else did the doctor say?” I ask. “He says that I need to see a doctor,” she replies. I say, “Sounds like good advice.” She nods, or this might be her head lolling under the strain of keeping it upright. She looks tired, or dazed. Both. And she says, “I can’t well go to some other doctor looking like this,” she says. Okay, I think, her plea must be serious; her house-call doctor has released her to self-care, pending (on condition of?) a full checkup at a hospital that has proper medical equipment to detect internal problems. Is there one for her mind, too? I’m scatting here, I know, but what does she want me to do? “Draw me a bath, Minus,” she says. I’m too distracted to argue, or question her command. I look at the bathroom, the darkened doorway my guide. I walk inside and turn on the light. The room’s sudden brightness agitates my senses. The bathroom is four-square mirrored. I see myself from every conceivable angle, and in the corners only half of me.
I peek out the door; she is taking off her shirt. This is semi-madness, I don’t want to find myself embalmed in this potency. The collar is pulled back across her shoulders and she’s pulling at the shirt tails while trying to undo a cuff button one-handed (using the cuffed hand!). Three tasks at once is the essay of the concussed mind. I slide back into the bathroom and my hands turn the faucets to run the bath. The spigot is shaped like a lion’s head, a nearly life-size brass sculpture. The water roars from its mouth with a stream as wide as a fire hose. I kneel beside the tub and drop the rubber plug into the drain, its brass chain wound through my fingers. The tub fills quicker than I could have anticipated. I make the water hot but not scalding.
I feel her presence behind me. When I turn, she’s there, leaning against the door, using the handle for ballast. “I can’t undo the buttons,” she says. Her words wash through the water running into the tub. Her face is fixed in a childlike pout, hands and wrists thrust forward through the buttoned sleeves. “Come here.” I put my hand on the edge of the tub. The edge is flanged and wide enough to sit flat. She steps forward and plops herself down almost on my hand, a near fall. Her rankness hits me, but it’s mixed somehow with perfume, or body lotion, whose sweetness reminds me of the wild honey I used to find in the forest near my childhood home. The bees made their hive in the nook of a dying tree, and when I got close, the sweetness of clover honey surrounded me like the heavy air of a summer thunderstorm. Karen turns her palms up to show me the defiant cuff buttons. I take hold of the left and quickly undo the two buttons (one is loose enough that its thread breaks in my hand). Next, I undo the right cuff. This was not difficult. Her face is mild misery, jumbled resignation for one who must accept help. Her head rolls forward to rest the black-and-blue chin on her chest. She keeps her hands above her knees, like a zombie. I take hold of her arm and pull one cuff over her hand, and work her arm back as the sleeve slides forward and off. I pull the half of the blouse behind her back, and I pull the other sleeve from her right arm. I roll the loose button into the blouse and drop it on the tiles. She’s left with a man’s white undershirt covering her, soiled as a grease monkey’s rag, tucked into a brown gypsy skirt, something once pleated but now flattened or otherwise creased in every which direction. Her feet are also in men’s socks, white cotton athletic socks stained gray with dirt. “Shouldn’t … wouldn’t you prefer someone else to help you bathe?” I say. “This is a friend’s duty, a female friend, or a nurse, and I’m neither.” Her chin rises long enough for her to look stolidly at me, and maybe even with impish delight. She whispers beneath the water’s roil. “The doctor has left. There are no other … friends.” Then her eyes fall to the fluffy white mat beneath her soiled socks. I watch her wiggle her toes, and two pop free from behind a hole. She leans forward until her hands grip the edge of the tub, fingers splayed along the vertical white porcelain. I pull up the hem of her T-shirt. She raises her arms to match my progress, fast but easy enough to prove to her I’m not struggling with this situation. Her head rotates, she looks up, and I’m standing over her looking down through the inside-out shirt as this slips over her arms, catches her chin, springs upward with a pull, scrapes and catches her ear lobes until they fold over, and finally I’m looking through the neck hole at her face receding with the rise of the shirt. She lets her arms down slowly, back to the tub, which she again grips. I avert my gaze from her breasts that have appeared suddenly without their brassier harness. I soften my focus and toss the grimy shirt on the floor with the blouse. I kneel and take off each of her socks. Then I undo the zipper at the side of her skirt, from the hip. “Stand up, please.” She complies and the skirt falls around her feet. She places a hand on my shoulder as she steps free, pulling one leg over the tub and then the other, where she stands in the hot water. “Ah-ow-ah!” she says at the water’s temperature, but there’s no further complaint. Her fingers hook into the top of her panties, these are unsoiled and modern and silky. She slides them down her hips as she lowers herself into the water. More “oh”s and “ah”s. The elastic band has left hyphenated impressions across her hip and thigh and the soft bulge of her belly when she bends. I watch her sink slowly beneath the water, where she pulls the panties free from her legs and feet, folds them in three, and hands them to me. I place the dripping material on top of a pile I now make of all her discards at the base of the door. I’ve looked for a proper hamper, but nothing is visible. She has pulled her legs to her chest, chin on her knees, wrists wrapped around her ankles. The hot water has come up to her armpits, and steams around her sunken face. I turn off the faucet and the room is quiet.
A bar of soap in a scallop dish sits beside a natural sponge, both on a silver tray against the back-splash behind the lion’s head. I get down on my knees again, take hold of the soap and sponge, and dunk them in the water. While my hands work to make suds, I look away from her. The mirrored room, however, reflects her face and sho
ulders and knees from various angles. My sight trains itself on the milky water, made by my over-busy hands because I can’t seem to start the next task. “Please,” she says, finally taking me off this trance, “before the water cools.” I look at her. She’s thin and pale. I want to think that her skin is fair, so this is what I do. Finally I pull my hands from the water, which steam as I drip hot suds over her back and shoulders. The sound echoes through the room. I take more water into the sponge and bring it to her shoulders to let it run down again. Then I touch the sponge to her skin, move it in circles across her shoulders, up her neck, and then down her spine all the way under the water to her waist, back up her sides, out of the water and across each arm. Her skin ripples at the sponge’s touch on her forearms and wrists and hands, which she’s allowed to float up from her ankles, and they bob in the water like driftwood. The soft sound of wind through trees is how the sponge reveals its presence, and the dripping water plays tiny notes of a winter stream. Through this she is docile, silent, chin-to-knees, eyes somewhere that I cannot see until I peek in the mirrored corner which reflects her downward facing nose, pointed at the water like a horse or dog or some animal that is used to getting its bath, only a mild nuisance to be endured, and today is no different. Her eyes watch the bubbles burst on the water’s surface and dissolve as the current constantly pushes out from her knob knees held above the waterline. The white bandage on her temple is affixed with surgical tape. “How’s your head?” I ask. My voice is hollow, dream-captured, its echo hollow, too. “It hurts,” she says, an equally hollow sound. I run the sponge along her skin and watch the grime wash away, diluted in the bathwater. I take one wrist and her arm comes up with it for me to wash underneath, the armpits shaved smooth. I see her breasts jiggle in the water. Her skin is magnificent, I notice, now that she has come clean. It is nicely taut around the elbows and wrists, beneath the triceps, as well — always the bane of women who’ve discarded athletics or exercise. “Will you see another doctor?” “Maybe. This one says my head has not been concussed.” I doubt her, and her doctor. My hands move to her legs, first to the knees; next, the shins; then the thighs. My fingers are flushed from the hot water, the skin has pruned, spongy yet rough across the fingerprint ridges that have swelled. When I pull her leg up clear of the water, to clean her right foot, she leans back and rests against a cushion affixed with suction cups. Through the suds I see her breasts again, afloat, and how they wiggle as I scrub her soles vigorously enough that her body ruffles the water. She makes no move to cover herself. She has closed her eyes. If she’s not trying to provoke me, I think, she’s only thinking of me as the helpful man, not a savior or knight. I can accept this. I soap the tops of her feet and begin, without thinking about how or why, to massage her toes. As I work the muscles and the joints between my fingers, her face makes appealing movements for more. The water runs down her shins, around her calves, and merges with the pool at the convergence of her legs. In this pool I see her pubic hair, a hazy shadow under the nacreous water. My eyes slowly rise toward her face, across her breasts; the nipples softly breach the surface when she inhales, and drop below at the exhale. She has kept her eyes closed, her face now in peaceful repose.
I wash the other leg, and massage the left foot as I did the right. When I replace this leg in the water, she opens her eyes. Her expression is neutral. “Can you do your hair?” I ask. But she says, “I’d like you to finish.” This is manipulation, I think. She wants to see if I will cross the line, some line that she’s drawn as part of her game. A line that began with her having me take off her clothes, or perhaps earlier. Isn’t this true? She couldn’t act innocent if I were to reach over and cup her breasts, or kiss her on the mouth. Is this true? “Are you feeling better?” I ask. She says, “Not brand new, but I’m past that anyway.” There’s no sign of her concussion now, the one the doctor claimed she didn’t receive from the blows inflicted by the punks, or from the fall during which she struck her head on the bus’s metal floor. Her body is in fine shape, I notice for a second time. Must be from all that walking. Maybe The Parkview has a gym and exercise room in the basement (or the penthouse, with park views), where a personal trainer books residents for weekly workouts to keep their bodies toned, looking NY chic, ready for the cocktail circuit. Her legs resemble those of a long-distance runner, thirty years on, supple but, only, no longer youthful. On the other hand, I think, in a fit of uncertainty whether to wash her hair or say good-bye now, she could simply be undernourished and in need of breakfast. “Where’s your shampoo?” She points to a half-dozen bottles I’ve seen all along, next to the soap dish. I reach across her to make a choice. Just grab any bottle. One has eucalyptus infusion, another apple-cinnamon (I imagine her head smelling like a warm pie), and a third announces “triple-dandruff” protection in a mint scent. A forth bottle holds cream rinse. I select the apple-cinnamon, just for fun. I walk on my knees around the tub to position myself behind her. She has leaned her head back. She rotates her shoulders in yogi fashion. My view is of an artist inspecting his model.
“Do you like what you see?”
Her voice is a sudden intrusion. My surprise sounds out in my answer. “Is this why I’m here?”
The question makes her flinch. Her hands come up slowly from her sides, and her palms cover her breasts, while her thighs instinctively pinch together, making her patch sink deeply into the fold.
“No,” she says. “I wanted your help. That’s all I– … that’s all I’ve asked for.” I look from the top of her head into the mirror and we abruptly sight each other for the first time since entering the bathroom. People think they see one another when taken altogether, in the flesh, face to face and from corners across a bed, or when the subject isn’t expecting she (he) is being watched. What I think is that we really don’t see people until we see them through a mirror, not in the nude, as an image taken at an angle at once familiar but wholly unique. Unique to that person. The difference appears at the two-dimensional surface and its reverse symmetrical image, that which we’re otherwise used to seeing of the people we know. This is how she and I see each other now.
I upend the shampoo bottle and squeeze a dollop of liquid into my palm. The snap of the closing lid against my wrist is a penny-splash in our minds. My palms come together to spread the shampoo before they touch her head, then the fingers work the liquid through her hair, avoiding the bandage, hair that’s not as greasy as I’d thought from wearing the wig. I cup my hand and take water from the tub to further wet her head. Suds rise and my fingers work across her scalp. We look at each other in the mirror again. No words pass. I massage her scalp for a while — moments during which her hands slide from her breasts, sink into the water again, back down to her sides. Her legs, too, part into a natural position at rest. “Face soap?” I say. She reaches up for a bar that’s in a separate dish next to the lion’s head. I take handfuls of water and pour this over her head, rinsing out the shampoo. A lot of the water and suds drain outside the tub, but I don’t care. This isn’t going to be a perfect job, I think, although it’ll do well. She holds the facial soap while I finish rinsing her hair. Then I take the soap and lather my hands. She turns her face up and holds her eyes open for a moment, then closes them tightly when I begin to paint green soap circles onto her cheeks and chin and forehead, and move over to the un-bandaged temple (which I’ve forgotten about and see that it’s wet and must soon be changed). I finish at her nose. She senses this is the end and lets herself sink completely below the water. She comes up and allows the water to rinse her hair and face naturally, without wiping her skin with her hands. She repeats this submarine maneuver twice more. I worry about her stitches, but I realize this is her worry. Soon she blinks the watery remains free from the corners of her eyes. It’s now that I find my hands have been on her shoulders and have remained there since finishing her face. Perhaps I had even helped her slide into the water, and to resurface. I don’t know for certain. And as I think to wonder, she reaches up and cover
s my cool, water-beaded hands with hers, so warm and fragrant from the water’s depths. She grips my fingers like grasping flower stems, and brings them down to chin level, where she kisses the left on the wrist, and then the right at the same spot. “Karen,” I say. She nods her head, then shakes it, leaving me unable to know what she means, or wants, or wants from me. I want to leave. This would be easy: take my hands from hers and stand up and walk out. I watch her lips part as she pulls my hands down below the water. My arms follow this descent, down and around her shoulders, until our heads come close and her lips reach for mine. Our eyes stay open as we kiss, her pupils fixed on mine. My eyes wash through her emotions, lying startlingly clear behind those golden brown irises. My hands are taken far below the water, where they are slowly fitted into the crease of her thighs. Her eyelids flutter. Her tongue comes from its place in the middle of her mouth and touches the tip of my tongue, playing with its own tentative probes that are like kissing fishes. The tongues then do a slithering dance. I hear her breath through her nose, and feel it on my cheek. My shoes squeak on the wet tiles behind us. Our chests rise quickly and fall in fits. My fingers are wet and inside her, but with friction, moving slowly, around and in and out and around, back in, deeper now. Her hands grip my wrists and help my fingers move. She’s become moist, less frictious. Her eyes close and our lips roll and move and mash. My eyes lurch left and in a fuzzy vision I see her knees lift up to her chest, and her hand lets go of my right hand and takes the left in both of hers and now my right hand comes away because the left needs more room to move deeper or else I’ll lose contact with her mouth against mine. Her breath is hot against my cheek and lurches in gasps. I feel my dick against the side of the tub, rubbing against it as she rocks her hips forward and back, her knees out of the water and hitting the bathtub waves like a boat moored in a storm. She lets my fingers go deep, then back out all the way, slowly, on the out-pass dragging up across her clitoris, then back down and in, deep again, until she’s rocking and gaining speed, speed that becomes pulsating quick. The water splashes against the sides of the tub, crests the rim and runs over. Her hands hold my wrist, helping my hand move to her tempo, how she wants it to move faster but I resist and make her do this with me. Our lips are yet tender, but fervent and writhing. She moves and ruts and then softly grunts and lets the air out of her chest in gasps, closes her legs around my hand and slowly ceases her rocking.
I close my eyes and wait for her. In a while, no longer than a few breaths, she releases my lips from hers, and her hands float to the surface, while my hand is still in her possession below. I keep my eyes shut while I hear Karen say, “It’s okay, Minus. Everything will be okay.”