Page 305 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 293

I was determined to be like other men, and learn the secrets I had
always missed in all the other inner circles of boys.
Tuesday I stood, early outside her address, her salon, her apart-
ment, her two rooms, for fifteen minutes, in the dark, under the
lamplight, actually lit by the bright light of the Communist book-
store on the first floor of her building, looking up through the cur-
tains of her window, four floors up, watching her arranging flowers
she had bought herself. “I always buy my flowers myself,” she had
said. She saw me, shook her head, and waved me up.
“You’re laughing at me,” I said.
“Never.” She ushered me through her door. “My roommate is
out,” she said. “Does that make any difference to you?”
“Should it?”
“Cary Grant,” she mocked me, “come in.” She received me in
one of those Breakfast at Tiffany’s black hostess outfits with long
pants and a long skirt open in front, where you’d notice, pocket to
pocket.
I squeezed past her in the narrow hall. She handed me one of
the two glasses of wine in her hands. She smiled, closed the door,
and leaned against it. “You’ve never seen anybody do this before,”
she said.
“What?”
“Lean back against the door.”
“Nobody in real life.”
“Darling,” she said, flagging a hand from her chest out to arm’s
length where a finger wriggled at me, “you’ve never seen real life.”
“Yes, I have,” I said to contradict her. “But I’ve never seen a movie
where a woman closed a door without leaning on it.”
She looked annoyed, baubles, bangles, bright shining beads, then
recouped. “You need a...big glass of wine. Drink up.” She swung
easily by me. She wore one earring, gold and pendulous, that told
true gravity even as she rushed to fall posturing on the couch. “Sit
down, oh, please, sit down, do,” she said. “Welcome to my movie.”
I wanted to ask who she thought she was, and who she thought
I was.
“What movie am I?” she asked.
“What movie are you?”

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