WHEN I GOT BACK TO the house that evening I felt alive. All my life I’d avoided women. They complicated my time. I’d learned how to do everything alone, how to use men for what I needed, and whenever another woman was around, there would invariably be jealousy, or I was bound to act differently, to be less sexual and exacting.
But with Alice it was the opposite. I felt the need to turn myself up more. She made me feel the way that Gosia had—valid.
Vic had questioned Gosia’s role in my life once, when he was feeling me slip away. He knew I told Gosia everything. He asked whether I was sure she was the best influence on me. I slapped him across the face. His stubbly cheek jiggled and he apologized right away.
The truth is, who knows, she might have been a bad influence. She taught me that men will use you unless you use them first, that sometimes men must be punished because women are in important pain from the moment they are born until the moment they die. But you could also say that my mother taught me that, and you could of course say that it was my beloved father who fucked the whole thing up. Gosia did the most for me and did the least to hurt me of anyone in my life.
I remember vividly the first night she brought me to a bar. I was fifteen. She didn’t drink much, a glass of Grüner here and there. I ordered a Bloody Mary. The bartender, a kind-looking man in his fifties, didn’t question it.
Gosia unclipped her hair, which was in a chignon. I loved that word. She shook her head and I watched her platinum hair fall around her shoulders. I was not the only one. I clocked three men staring at her neck. She looked at me and smiled. She knew they were looking at her.
There were many such evenings. She never told my uncle where we were going. She never even told him when we were going to the mall.
Always ask questions. Never answer them.
Have more secrets than the person you are with.
She spoke in epithets. She never implicitly said it, but she was teaching me how not to end up like my mother.
She taught me well. I could turn it on at any time. I had a man I would never fuck move the contents of one apartment to another, all on his own.
Gosia couldn’t erase what I’d seen as a child. She knew that she could not. But she tried very hard. I became a sort of Frankenstein’s monster. I could make a man like Vic cut another man’s throat for me, but I could not get the twenty-four-year-old to call me the morning after we fucked. Even with Vic, though, I wasn’t using him to nefarious ends. I was just afraid to be alone. I was looking for fathers in every train car.
* * *
THAT AFTERNOON LENNY WASN’T SITTING at our outside table, which annoyed me because I’d asked Alice to wait while I ordered him a paper boat of fried calamari. She asked me about him and I told her some stories and she alternately laughed and shook her head. My life amused her.
She dropped me off and we didn’t inquire about what the other was doing. It was that early time in a friendship when you respect boundaries and evenings are off limits.
I walked with the squid to Lenny’s tiny home and knocked. Because the last time we’d spoken he’d been alert and very much himself I wasn’t expecting him to be in the middle of an episode, but he was.
I heard him through the door say, Lenore, is that you?
I was depraved. I stole from stores. I used men, but I always gave something of myself in return. But plain and mean deceit? Never. Until that moment.
—Yes, I said. It’s me, darling.
Leonard opened the little door to his home.
—My life! he said, pulling me into his body and kissing me on the mouth. I inhaled the smell of his age. He was wearing linen pants and a cotton t-shirt.
—Tell me the news of the world! he said, smoothing my hair back with the palm of his hand and gazing into my eyes so intently I thought for sure he would snap out of it. But he didn’t. We sat together on the couch.
—It’s vicious out there, darling. I’m happy to be back. Shall I fix us a cup of tea?
—What’s that in your hand?
—Fried squid. I brought it from Malibu.
—What were you doing in Malibu? he asked, looking haunted.
—I was down there with a girlfriend of mine.
—I see. Lenore, let me ask you—I worry you are still upset by the thing that happened?
The way he spoke to Lenore was saintly, unreal. With me, he was his crude, erudite self; with Lenore, he was a gentleman. One of my greatest furies was the way men treated me like I would not merely endure their filth but endorse it.
—Oh, what thing? Do you mean the other night when you went into my ass?
—What?
—The other night, darling, when we tried what you’ve been wanting to try.
—Oh. Was that at Sandstone? The mickey I took… I can’t remember so much.
—Yes. We were in the red bedroom. After the pool.
—I can’t—
—It’s all right if you don’t remember, my love. It hurt a little, but. Overall I’d say I enjoyed it.
—Did you?
—I enjoy everything with you.
—That’s good to hear, he said, patting my wrist like the elderly man that he was. I squeezed the wedge of lemon across the paper boat and handed him a leggy clump. An expression of pure gratitude came over his face. He took the whole boat from me. He made humming noises, overchewing each piece and swallowing with occasional difficulty. It’s a particular heartbreak to watch an old man eat something he’s enjoyed all his life. His brows moved like inchworms and he didn’t look up at me again until after he’d finished.
I walked into his kitchen for a piece of paper towel. He bought the cheap, rough kind. I wet a corner of it in the small sink and brought it back to the couch. I took the empty boat from him and dabbed his mouth with the moist paper towel.
—Lenore, you’re so good to me.
—And you to me, my love.
Lenny had an eight-bottle wooden wine rack next to the television; I selected the most expensive-looking one and poked around for glasses. He once told me he had all the good china in storage, save the Laboratorio plates. Storage for what, I wanted to ask him. He had no children, nobody to whom to pass along his china. I found two short glasses made by Oneida with seventy-nine-cent stickers from some dollar store in the Valley.
I brought our glasses to the couch. I moved slowly, wary of shocking him back into the present.
—We are in a low, dishonest decade, he said.
—Isn’t that true of every decade?
—No, not all of them. In any case that’s Auden, not me. But it’s truer now than it was then.
—Do you agree with that, darling?
—Somewhat, Lenore. Somewhat I do. September first, 1939, and November eighth of this year. They are mirrors if you look in the right light. Do you know what else Auden said? He said we all have Hitler in us.
—Hmm. I believe all men have a rapist in them, just dying to get out.
—Excuse me?
—Nothing, my love. You seem tense. Is something troubling you?
—Your feelings for me, Lenore.
He took my arms in his bony hands. His pupils were hazy, like those of a fish on ice at a discount grocer’s.
—After I lie down, love, after I take a rest, I wondered if we might lie with each other?
I could feel his penis wanting to rise. He was not wearing the watch. I would come to learn that he wore it only when he had those few hours of definitive clarity after taking his drugs. But one day he would make a mistake. I would be patient.