Heatwaves, Pinners, Naked Waiters
David and the Lion’s Den, Chapter 9
The heat wave rolled right along through the next couple of crazy weeks, bathing the City in sour steam. Eighth Avenue felt like an oppressive subway tunnel as I trudged up and down the 10 blocks between home and garden. The subway platforms, themselves? I watched people pass out from the heat, eyes rolling back eggshell white as their knees buckled.
Hilda stayed home with her air conditioner most of the time. Carla disappeared. Her makeup would have slid right down her face, anyway.
Howie and I were busy as hell. The boat ride was coming up the Sunday before Labor Day, and Renaud’s show was opening the Tuesday after.
Jill rolled her eyes when she heard. “That’s either really stupid or really arrogant, hon. Tuesday? Seriously?”
Maybe she was still a little jealous, but she had a point. I didn’t know anything about the business of art. I had no idea that Renaud was known as an eccentric who liked to spring surprises and keep his audience guessing. This was just his style — an inconvenient opening on the very first day of the Season, everyone still settling back into their City routines.
Did he know?
Did he plan the media feast that put his show in the headlines? I wouldn’t put it past him, but I don’t see how. Although I agree with Jill that a stunt like that would be just like him, it had to be a fortunate coincidence. Fortunate for him, that is.
I was oblivious to it all, just trying to cope with the heat and finish up the paintings I owed him. Those two weeks were insane as I fine tuned portraits furiously in the garden and helped with the final boat-ride preparations in the afternoons.
We were rushing through our meal deliveries so we could stockpile and organize all the party stuff. Alonzo let us use Cucina’s basement. I was shocked at how much we could lug down there. Big white delivery vans pulled up with donations every day. We’d prop open the sidewalk access doors and cart box after box down into the cave.
Crates of booze. Kegs. Boxes of heavy linens. Tubs of flatware. Crepe paper. Card tables. Lighting equipment. Canned food.
I wiped stinging sweat away from my eyes one day as we worked, and moaned. “Dude, how are we gonna handle all this?”
Howie was tipping back a bottle of Dewars, leaning against shelves and looking relaxed. “Whaddya mean, Mary Louise?” he asked after a healthy swig.
“Dude, it’s too much! How the fuck we gonna get all this shit to the boat on Sunday? And have it all set up by 6? Crazy!”
He laughed and passed me the bottle. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re done. After we unload this truck and do tomorrow’s deliveries, that’s it. Nothing left to do but party our tits off.”
“Seriously?” Suddenly a mouthful of sun-warmed whiskey seemed like a good idea.
“Starting as soon as the sun comes up Sunday, bub,” Howie explained as my lips touched hot glass, “this place is gonna be crawling. Every third caterer, decorator, set designer, and stage hand in the Village is is gonna swarm between here and the Circle Line pier. They’ll turn that boat into a palace. You’ll see!”
The hot booze burned a sour path down to my gut. “What are we gonna do?”
“Sleep in, head to the boat, take tickets, and escort VIPs to the private lounge, where we’ll smoke, drink, and snort ourselves silly. What else?”
Aha.
A few minutes later, hosing myself down in the scullery before throwing on my work pants and white shirt, I let myself start looking forward to the weekend.
My first big party in the City. The first one I really belonged at. The first one where I wouldn’t feel like a fake. As I sluiced stale sweat off my body, I imagined myself rubbing shoulders with real New Yorkers as an equal. Imagined how it would go.
“Oh, I’m a painter,” I’d say. “That’s right, de la Fréta. You can see a few of my portraits in Renaud’s little show on Tuesday.”
Oh, yeah! I’m in, I thought. It’s all starting for me. I was toweling down and grinning stupidly when the clang of steel doors startled the expression right off my face.
Raphael took me by surprise. The scullery was usually empty until the Mexican dish dudes started washing up after the first tables of the night. He actually looked embarrassed to find me mostly naked. I didn’t think he had it in him.
He blushed and held out a hand to show me a little pinner he’d rolled. “Quieres?”
“Yeah, I guess. Why not? Just one hit, though, or I’ll mess my orders up.”
I felt his eyes on me as I pulled my clothes on, heard his lighter flick, smelled the butane. “That’s good weed, man,” I choked out a minute later as I passed the joint back. I think that started the only candid conversation we ever had. Maybe the ice had broken for us on the roof. I don’t know.
Raph wasn’t cocky and silent like I was used to. Maybe it was the weed, but he was relaxed, just acting like a normal guy. He looked his age for once. You’d forget how young he was.
He even asked me questions like, “What are you doing in New York?”
So, I told him my story. The whole stars-in-the-eyes thing. Kansas boy seeks fame and fortune. Embarrassing. He didn’t seem impressed.
“You parents?” he asked softly.
“Oh, they’re great. Dad really wanted me to be a lawyer like him, but Mom’s cool. Well, almost. She worries. They both just want me to have a good life.”
I don’t know what his look meant. It might almost have been a sneer, but something softer lay underneath it. His parents were both dead, he told me. Something about a fire when he was 13. I didn’t get all the details, but he said he came to the US when he was 14. Lived in some crowded one-bedroom in Queens with a bunch of other guys, all of them working for Esteban one way or the other. Didn’t even have a bed to sleep in.
“Who is he to you?” I broke in.
“Mi tio. Uncle, you know?”
“But he owns Cucina and this whole building. He’s rich!” I protested. “He let you live like that? Was he your mom’s brother or your dad’s?”
“Not that kind of tio, man,” was all he said.
When he got big enough to bus tables without some concerned patron calling CPS, Esteban brought him to to the restaurant.
“No more school for you after that?”
“School? Escuela? You crazy, man?”
So, with his busing wages and a hustling sideline, he moved to a small walk-up in the East Village. I got the impression that hustling was a game he’d started even before Cucina — just by how he explained something. He didn’t come right out with it.
I don’t know his whole story. As far as I know, nobody does. I don’t know if anybody ever really knew him. I don’t think he ever had a friend.
Howie found us in there after a few minutes and bitched at us to hurry up. “And use this!” he grumped, tossing a bottle of eyedrops at me. I hadn’t stopped at one hit, after all.
Renaud was one of my first customers. “I am trying to reach you all the day,” he complained. “You are never at home. We open on Tuesday. Do you forget this?”
“Hey, I’ve been painting, man. Sorry!”
“Painting? Are you crazy? Are you fou in the head? We have no time for painting now. I need you at the gallery tonight — with the last three canvases.”
“But I don’t get off til midnight!”
Then you can be there by one, n’est-ce pas?”
Those last few days of the heatwave were crazy. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.
You just read chapter 9 of a character-driven mystery set in Greenwich Village during the worst of the HIV Plague Years. David, Jill, Hilda, Richard, and Howie — and Raphael — are walking a path that leads to intense friendship and love, to the creation of gorgeous but wrenching art, and to the unraveling of a series of horrific events that nobody sees, not even as they happen.Because sometimes what you’re looking at isn’t what you see.
