Philip Nutman - Cities of Night

He picks up the bottle of Dickel and takes a big pull, leaving only a drop. Barely a mouthful. It doesn’t matter. The beer and sour mash are working their dark, obliviating magic. The room spins suddenly, a nauseous tilt-a-whirl, and he can hardly sit up straight, self-pity and self-disgust sloshing around inside him like oil and water; self-pity because he is alone — as he has always been — and self-disgust because he lacks the strength to overcome his weaknesses, his neediness.

It is the sixth month of their relationship. The passion has cooled, the lovemaking no longer as exciting, as all-consuming as it once was. Long periods of silence replace conversation, and Lydia is spending an increasing amount of time at the gallery she works at on Green Street. He senses she is avoiding him, trying to ignore the promise of what they’ve shared. She doesn’t have to work the hours she puts in, so now they are living a lie: the apartment they share is not a home; it has become a prison.

They are in bed. He dreams they are there asleep, waking as she gets up. She’s going to the bathroom, he thinks. But she does not return. He gets up to search the dream apartment.

She’s not there.

The door to the hall is open. He goes outside, vulnerable, naked. The hall is not that of the apartment building; it looks like a hotel. Disoriented, he turns to go back, but the door has shut. He has no choice but to find her.

He walks the hallway, his hands covering his genitals. All the doors are locked. Then he hears voices coming from the room at the end.

Greg Vale, an old high school friend, appears with a girl on each arm. Their laughter stops as they see him. One of the girls stifles a giggle.

“Have you seen Lydia?” he asks.

“Yeah, she’s left you.” Greg looks sad as he speaks.

Then he and the girls wander away, absorbed in their intimacy. Carpenter walks back down the hall. Now he cannot find the door to the apartment.

He wakes with a start, his heart beating triple-time. Lydia lies beside him on her back, the serenity of sleep casting her face as a mask of innocence.

But he knows.

She has left him. Her spirit is gone.

The following night, she slashes her wrists.

The memory of that Wednesday is so clear it seems like only last week.

The day started out filled with promise, a sudden Spring after a barren Winter, and for the first time in months he felt unrestrained enthusiasm. The mail had arrived early. There was the usual pile of junk mail, a letter for Lydia from Boston, and a card from the Pictures of Lilly Gallery down on Spring Street. Another show, he thought as he turned it over. Sandreen, the manageress, was an old friend, a punky lesbian with purple hair whom he’d met while doing a night course in Modern Art at S.V.A. She was always sending him invites to openings even though he’d stopped going, depressed by other people’s successes and the mediocrity of their work.

He had to read the card three times before the truth hit home: Hey, Jim, don’t be a stranger… Bobbi wants to talk business… Jim Carpenter, come on down! It’s show time! — YES, YOUR SHOW!!! We want to give you a spot!

Luv, Sandy.

Three kisses and a purple lipstick smear.

It was too much to hope for… and yet. Bobbi, Sandy’s lover, had always expressed an interest in his work. Were they serious? He’d give them a call once he got to work. No, he’d call them now, even if it was 7:30 AM. They often stayed up all night partying; maybe they were awake.

Lydia was still asleep as he crept back into the apartment. He took the phone into the bathroom and dialled. On the third ring, Sandy answered, and it was true!

They wanted him and his work.

Okay, so it was to be part of a show called “Upper East Side: Visions Above 60th,” and he was going to be one of five artists exhibiting, but so what? A dream was about to become reality.

Unable to resist, he woke Lydia to tell her the good news. Once she came to full consciousness, she smiled a deep, loving smile, the kind which he hadn’t seen in several weeks. She hugged him, said they should celebrate. He suggested dinner at Franco’s. It was agreed. He kissed her again, wishing he could go back to bed to make love, the nightmare forgotten, but he was going to be late for work so he reluctantly departed, leaving her letter on the table.

The day dragged, the bank’s interior a jailhouse of lifeless angles, soulless lighting, antiseptic steel and glass. Still, nothing could contain the joy pulsing through his veins, the sense of achievement.

During his lunch break, he took a walk up Third Avenue to gaze at the jutting spire of the Chrysler Building, his favourite monument on the city skyline. Its Art Deco architecture always instilled in him a sense of wonder, its gargoyles sleek and otherworldly, even if they were made from hubcaps. He stopped at a pay phone and called Lydia.

She didn’t sound too happy, and there was an air of hostility in her voice he couldn’t fathom. He asked if everything was okay. She replied she couldn’t talk with people in the office. Bad news? No, just something I’ve got to talk to you about. Concerned, he pressed for information.

“Look, I’ll tell you tonight.” She hung up on him.

He walked back to work in a state of confusion, but she called him five minutes after he returned to apologize, said her boss was bugging her and she’d started her period early. Said she loved him, said it was nothing serious, that she’d see him at the restaurant at 7:00 PM. He felt better and thought no more about it.

7:15 PM and he sat at the bar nursing a Manhattan. Yeah, it was a cliché, but tonight it felt like it was his town. Lydia was usually half-an-hour late so her not being there was no big deal. She’d probably gone home to change, deciding to dress up for the occasion. But by 7:55 PM, worry and hunger began gnawing at his insides. The maître d’ said he couldn’t hold the table longer than another fifteen minutes so he phoned the apartment. All he got was the answering machine .

At 8:10 PM he told the maître d’, a short, officious man with slicked black hair, to cancel the reservation. He called again. Just the machine.

His back muscles were tense with apprehension as he ran out onto Fifth Avenue to hail a cab, anxiety digging sharp nails into his abdomen as the car crawled up Third through heavy traffic. All thoughts of the show, of the new pictures he’d been thinking of doing were erased by Lydia’s absence.

He looks at the unfinished paintings gathering dust in the corner of the room, His show? Hah. Visions Above 60th — all he saw that night was a vision of Hell.

As he reaches for the door, he knows something is terribly wrong, The thought is not conscious; it comes from some dark, instinctual level below reason, and as he touches the frame, static pricks his fingertips as if in warning. As he enters the apartment, the emotionally charged air rolls over him like a tsunami, sweeping away control.

“Lydia?” His voice trembles as he speaks.

There is no answer.

He goes to the kitchenette. Signs of violence: broken glass coats the floor, crunching underfoot, the sounds grating on his flayed nerves; in the sink are a pile of burnt photographs, the ashes wet leaves of nitrate paper. He picks one up, the only one not fully burnt.

It is of Lydia and someone else, but the other figure is unidentifiable, the image charred to a soggy black.

An empty Smirnoff bottle lies beside the garbage can, its neck smashed off.