awning, half-concealed in the shadows, while Marilyn takes out his compact to check on the goods. He frowns. “That salt terrible for my skin. Suck the moisture right out, sleeping every night on a big pile of salt. Even the rats don't like living on salt.” Is that because the rats are worried, I wonder, about their complexions? Meantime, near the curb, Marilyn strikes a pose he borrowed from a Madonna video. Just up the street is Randi, who claims he used to play with the Harlem Globetrotters. Wearing a leather mini and a red halter, Randi stands six eight in heels beneath a sign that reads FRANKS SALAMI BOLOGNA LIVERWURST KNOCKWURST STEW MEATS & SKIRT STEAKS.
Down Gansevoort, at the edge of the district, the neon sign of a fashionable diner emits a pink glow. So very far away—this place where the assholes I went to college with are tossing back colored drinks and discussing the stock market and interoffice gropings. Like my former best friend, George Bing, who wanted to be a poet and works for an ad agency in midtown. We roomed together at NYU, which I dropped out of after two years because I was way too cool. After George graduated, we'd meet for drinks at the Lion's Head or the White Horse, where he thought he was slumming and I felt like an interloper among the gentry. So excited when he first walked in as a freshman—with a fake ID from a store on Forty-second Street—that Dylan Thomas had guzzled his final drinks practically where we were sitting, he gradually, over the years, decided that the Welsh bard had wasted and abused his talent. I mean, sure, George admitted, he was great, but what was so bad about being comfortable, taking care of your health, eating sensibly and writing copy for Procter & Gamble in between cranking out those lyrical heart's cries? And I'm on my best behavior, nodding like an idiot coming down off something I smoked or snorted and hoping the bartender won't remember he threw me out three months before. And eventually, I think, it became too embarrassing for both of us. I stopped calling, and Lord knows I don't have a phone now, except maybe the open-air unit on the corner of Hudson and Twelfth. Actually, it's been a relief to quit pretending.
Farther down Washington Street, a trio of junkies builds a fire in a garbage can, although the night is hot and steamy—the heat of the day, stored up in the concrete and asphalt, coming off now, cooking everyone slowly like so much meat. These guys, after they've been on the street a few years, they never really get warm again. The winter cold stays in your bones through the long stinking summer and forever, like a scar. The old farts wear overcoats and boots in August. That way, you don't have to change clothes for winter.
I'm just fine in my black T-shirt and denim jacket, which doubles as a blanket, thanks. Be off the street before that happens to me. When I paint my masterpiece. Franks salami bologna.
A red Nissan slows to a stop. Marilyn sashays over to the car and schmoozes with the driver, turns and waves to me. I come out of the shadow to reveal myself in all my freaky emaciated menace, moon white face and dyed black hair, my yellow teeth in their bleedy gums. Marilyn zips around to the passenger side and climbs into the car, which makes a right and slows to a stop a half block down the street, where I can still see it. Farther on, a bum in an overcoat parks his overflowing shopping cart on the sidewalk and peers in the window at the brightly lit diners eating steak frites.
Eventually, Marilyn comes back from his date, adjusting his clothes and checking his makeup in a compact, just like a model. That's what he calls it—a date. He hands me a damp, crumpled fiver. I don't want to think about the dampness. I want to scrape the bill off my palm and throw it into the stinking street, but Marilyn's all excited about being back at work and planning for the future. He's talking about how it will be after the operation, when he gets married and moves to New Chursey. I want to slap him and make him understand that it's the land of the living dead. It's not real, not like this fabulous life we're living here on Gansevoort