I would say nothing (because I could say nothing) and he would just grin wider and say, “Sorry, baby, I can’t hear you. You gotta enunciate.”
But I couldn’t say it—at least not till he taught me how to say it.
“There are some words you need to learn, baby,” he told me one night while he was toying with me in bed. “And we ain’t doin’ nothing more till I hear you say it.”
Then he taught me the nastiest words I’d ever heard. Words that made me blush and burn. He made me repeat the words after him, and he relished how uncomfortable it made me. Then he went to work on my body again, leaving me splayed and flayed with longing. When I had reached such a peak of desire that I could scarcely draw a breath, he stopped what he was doing, and turned on the light.
“So, here’s what we’re gonna do now, Vivian Morris,” he said. “You’re gonna look me dead in the eye, and you’re gonna tell me exactly what you want me to do to you—using the words I just taught you. And that’s the only way it’s ever gonna happen, baby doll.”
And Angela, God help me, I did it.
I looked him dead in the eye, and I begged for it like a two-dollar hooker.
After that, it was Katy bar the door.
Now that I was infatuated with Anthony, the last thing I wanted to do anymore was go out on the town with Celia, picking up strangers for cheap, fast, pleasureless thrills. I didn’t want to do anything anymore but be with him—pinned to his brother Lorenzo’s bed—every moment that I could get. All of which is to say: I’m afraid I dropped Celia rather unceremoniously once Anthony showed up.
I don’t know if Celia missed me. She never showed any indication of it. Nor did she pull away from me in any notable way. She just went about her life, and was friendly to me whenever we collided (which was usually in bed, when she would come stumbling in drunk at the usual hour). Looking back on it now, I feel that I wasn’t a very loyal friend to Celia—in fact, I’d dumped her twice: first for Edna, and then for Anthony. But maybe the young are just feral animals in the way that they shift their affections and allegiances so capriciously. Celia could certainly be capricious, too. I realize now that I always needed somebody to be infatuated with when I was twenty years old, and it didn’t really matter who, apparently. Anybody with more charisma than me would do the trick. (And New York was filled with people more charismatic than me.) I was so unformulated as a human being, so unsteady in myself, that I was constantly grasping for attachment to another person—constantly anchoring myself to someone else’s allure. But evidently, I could only be infatuated with one person at a time.
And right now, it was Anthony.
I was glassy-eyed in love. I was dumbstruck with love. I was all but undone by him. I could barely concentrate on my duties at the theater, because honestly, who cared? I think the only reason I even went to the theater anymore is because Anthony was there every day, spending hours a day in rehearsal, and I got to see him. All I wanted was to be in his orbit. I would wait around for him after every rehearsal like the most absurd little twit, following him back and forth to his dressing room, running out to buy him a cold tongue sandwich on rye whenever he wanted one. I bragged to everyone who would listen that I had a boyfriend, and it was forever.
Like so many other dumb young girls throughout history, I was infected with love and lust—and moreover, I thought Anthony Roccella had invented the stuff.
But then there was the conversation I had with Edna one day, when I was fitting her with a new hat for the show.
She said, “You’re distracted. That’s not the color ribbon we’d agreed on.”
“Is it not?”
She touched the ribbon in question, which was scarlet red, and asked, “Does this look emerald green to you?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“It’s that boy,” Edna said. “He’s commanding all your attention.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “He sure is,” I said.
Edna smiled, but indulgently. “When you are around him, dear Vivian, you should know that you look exactly